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STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW 


EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE . 
OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


Volume CXVII] [Number 1 
Whole Number 260 


fHE ROMAN COLONATE 


The Theories of its Origin 


BY 


ROTH CLAUSING, Pu.D. 


Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Rochester 
Sometime Garth Fellow, Columbia University 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 
VLADIMIR G. SIMKHOVITCH 


Professor of Economic History, Columbia University 





New Dork 
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i 





STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW 


EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 
OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


Volume CXVII] | [Number 1 
Whole Number 260 





THE ROMAN COLONATE 


The Theories of its Origin 


BY 


ROTH CLAUSING, Px.D. 


Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Rochester 
Sometime Garth Fellow, Columbia University 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 
VLADIMIR G. SIMKHOVITCH 


Professor of Economic History, Columbia University 





New Dork 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 
SELLING AGENTS 
New YorkK: LONGMANS, GREEN & Co, 
LonpoN: P.S. Kinc & Son, LTD. 


1925 











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Ae eet aw 

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‘ INTRODUCTION 

¢ 

; THE work of Professor Clausing was undertaken at my 
ik suggestion five or six years ago, and now that it is finished 


«1 cannot help feeling that an important task has been ac- 
ty complished. It is, to begin with, the only comprehensive 
~..and up-to-date treatise on the colonate; it reviews all the 
i theories of the colonate for the last hundred years and 
critically examines the sources upon which they are based; 
and finally in the last two chapters, Professor Clausing pre- 
sents effectively the material that led him to share my view 

on the subject. 

All the old theories had their day in court, and learned 
criticism is likely to be centered, and rightly so, upon the 
theory that Professor Clausing and myself share in common. 
In the Digest, the tenant farmer or the colonus was free to 
move. In the Codes he is adscribed and bound to the soil. 
What was the object of such drastic abbreviation of the 

_ tenant’s civil liberties? He was obviously bound to the soil 
because he would not stay on the soil if not bound. Other 
attempts had been made before to retain an agricultural 
population, and only after all other attempts had failed, was 
adscription to the soil resorted to. Of the fact that the 
agricultural population was abandoning the land, we have 
ample, indeed, conclusive evidence. Ii the land was aban- 
doned in such wholesale fashion, does the idea not suggest 
itself that the people were leaving because agriculture was 
- not profitable? Had cultivation been profitable, there would 
have been no need of emphyteutic legislation, nor would it 
have been necessary to bind the tenant to the soil. The 
diminishing agricultural production and with it the dwindling 
of the agricultural population troubled the Roman admin- 

5] 5 


Zz a 
fete ual a Z 


for 
>. 


MAL 


6 INTRODUCTION [6 


istration very seriously. This the laws and the literature 
of the time make clear. 

Take the Constitutio de Scyris, discovered in 1824, which 
later led Savigny to accept the theory of Zumpt that the 
origin of the colonate is to be found in the settlement of 
barbarians. This very document gives the reason for that 
particular settlement—“ Licet .. . pro rei frumen(tari)ae 
angustiis”’. . . —the decrease in agricultural production. 

Is the progressive exploitation and final exhaustion of the 
fields of Italy and later on of the provinces a mere theory? 
What do the ancient agricultural writers tell us? Will not 
the critic admit that those agricultural writers knew as much 
as was to be known about the agricultural and agrarian con- 
ditions of their times? It would be insane to disregard 
their consensus of opinion. Most of the agricultural writ- 
ers are of course lost now; but what does Columella, for 
instance, tell us about the prevailing opinion? He begins 
the first chapter of the second book with the following lines: 
“You ask me, Publius Silvinus—and I hasten to reply to 
you—why I began my former book by refuting the ancient 
opinion of nearly all agricultural writers, and by rejecting 
as false their idea that the soil, worn out by long cultivation 
and exhausted, is suffering from old age.” The critic will 
observe that I cannot claim credit for an exhaustion-of-soil 
theory; but that this so-called theory was considered a fact 
by nearly all ancient writers. : 

Now Columella tells us that he differs from his predeces- 
sors; but in what respect? He says that the soil is not 
suffering from old age, but that if treated properly it would 
respond and improve. Something that we of course know 
perfectly well. However, when Columella is considering’ 
not the possible productivity of Italian soil under skilful 
treatment, but actual productivity, he tells us in Chapter IIT 
of the third Book, that no one can remember when the soil 
produced four-fold in Italy. “ Nam frumenta majore qui- 


7] INTRODUCTION 7 


dem parte Italiae quando cum quarto responderint, vim 
memimisse possumus.”’ The same tale we hear from all 
writers, whether they are of the first or of the fourth cen- 
tury. One letter of Symmachus is particularly interesting. 
He frankly admits that he does not expect to make his farm 
profitable, and that he can keep it up only by constant ex- 
penditure; “for,” he says, “it has come to be the rule in 
our age that land which once fed us now must itself be fed.” 

Under such conditions, one does not have to look very far 
for the reason and origin of the colonate. The reader will 
perhaps concede that it is not a theory or a construction 
which Professor Clausing and I are maintaining, but a frank 
admission of the facts that confront us. The freeman is 
bound to the soil for precisely the same reasons that led to 
the improvement in the condition of the agricultural slave. 
The agricultural slave too is bound to the soil in the hope 
of maintaining agricultural production and tillage. That 
this production is unprofitable and that great is the tempta- 
tion to sell the agricultural slaves off the land, leads the ad- 
ministration to drastic legislation. Here is a law that re- 
fers to the originarii and censitt. It absolutely forbids that 
they be sold off the land. “ Nor by tricky misconstruction 
shall the law be so evaded, as has repeatedly been done in the 
case of origimarii, that an entire estate shall be deprived of 
tillage by transferring a small portion thereof to the pur- 
chaser of the slaves.” * 

It is the question of tillage, the preservation of agricul- 
tural production, that looms largest, and to maintain agri- 
cultural productivity force was required. Thus the agri- 
cultural slave as well as the free tenant farmer was bound 
to the impoverished soil—and this is the solution of the 
colonate problem offered in this work, a solution which | 
trust will stand the test of time. 

VLADIMIR G, SIMKHOVITCH 


EGerdan Sin deer 





AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


THERE are few subjects in economic history of greater 
importance than the development of the institution of the 
Roman colonate. The legal attachment of the tenantry of 


the Roman Empire to the soil serves as the connecting link 
between the agrarian life of antiquity and that of medieval 


Europe. The colonate was intimately connected with the 
decline of ancient civilization; and it ushered in a form of 
agrarian organization which was to persist through most of. 
the Middle Ages. Yet, important as the transition to the 
colonate was in the economic life of the Roman Empire, it 
attracted singularly little attention from contemporaneous 
writers, at least from those whose works have been pre- 
served. The writers whose books became known in Rome 
and the other great cities of the Empire wrote of wars and 
barbarian invasions, of corruption and court intrigues, of 
the persecution and triumph of Christianity. The residents 
of a city are seldom interested in the troubles of the farmers; 
and in an age when the literate population was almost alto- 
gether metropolitan a change in the eines of the rural 
classes received little notice. 

Yet there is no doubt that there was a great transforma- 


tion in LEE rch ESPN MIT LTE hier MME 
Roman : and fourth centuries. 


Scanty as the sources are in sa to the life of the 
peasantry, writers of the late Republic and the early Empire 
offer unmistakable evidence that the cultivators of the soil 


at that time were c osed_ emen, who 
were either tenant farmers or small proprietors, and slaves. 


The great jurists, whose decisions were collected in the 
9] 9 


ite) AUTHOR’S PREFACE [10 


Digest of Justinian, show that this condition continued to the 
third century; and the jurists are more explicit than any of 
the preceding writers in describing the condition of the 
tenant farmers or coloni of their times. The coloni to 
whom the Digest referred were unquestionably freemen in 
every respect. They culfivated their land according to the 
terms of a five-year lease and paid a money rent. They 
were perfectly free to give up their holdings at the expira- 
tion of their leases and go any place they desired. Pro- 
prietors were forbidden to make any attempt to retain them 
on their estates against their will. 

But a century later the Theodosian and Justinian Codes 


present a picture of a colonus of a wholly different character. 
The colonus appears there as a tenant attached to the estate 


of his landlord iri perpetual and hereditary bonds. It is 
true that he had retained certain characteristics of a freeman. 
~ He could contract a legal marriage, he might become a 
soldier or a priest with the consent of the proprietor, and he 
was permitted to resort to the courts of law, even against 
his landlord, under certain contingencies. But under no 
circumstances was he allowed to sever the bonds which held 
chim tg the estate on which he was born. If he tried to 
escape he was brought back in chains and punished like a 
runaway slaye. Anyone who sheltered him as a fugitive 
was heavily fined. And all the force of the administration 
was bent toward restoring him to his native fields, even 
though he had succeeded in escaping detection and estab- 
lishing himself elsewhere for thirty years or more. 


The mystery of the origin of the serf-coldnate, as baffling 
as it_is important, has called forth the best efforts of many 
of the leading scholars in economic and legal history of the 
past_hundred_ years. “Nulle question peut-étre,” says a 
noted French savant,* “ ni historique ni juridique, n’ a fait 








* Beaudouin in the Nouvelle revue historique de droit francais, vol. xxi 
(1897), p. 697. 


11] | AUTHOR’S PREFACE II 


naitre plus de systémes ni écrire plus de pages.’”’ Classical 
works have been scanned with the most meticulous care in 
order to discover any information which might throw some 
light on the subject. Epigraphical expeditions have been 
organized in the hope of discovering new inscriptions which 
might be able to fill the gaps which the extant writings of 
antiquity have left. Fairly consistent accounts have been 
given by many writers of the gradual deterioration in the 
condition of the tenant farmer preceding their legal attach- 
ment to the soil. But the cause of the adscriptio glebae 
remains as much an enigma as ever. 

Explanations of all sorts have been offered to account for 
the origin of the colonate, but the theories which have re- 
ceived the most attention fall into two main types. One } 
group of scholars has searched assiduously for a prototype 


ra tis 


of the colonate; while the other group has sought to. connect 2 
the colonate legislation with the administration of taxation 
after the reforms of Diocletian. The colonate has been re- 
lated by the first group to dependent relationships which 
existed in early Italy and Greece, in Egypt, Asia Minor, 
Germany, and Gaul; and it has been ascribed to the sup- 
posed semi-servile status of barbarian settlements in the 
northern provinces of the Empire in the second and third 
centuries of our era. Yet even if these earlier dependent 
classes could be shown to be far more similar to the coloni 
of the Codes than the meagre information which is available 
concerning them seems to warrant, it would still remain to 
be proved that the colonate was formed in direct imitation 
of an earlier type of servile tenure, and not due to causes 
and conditions of the time. And supposing that this could 
be done, the problem would not yet be solved, but merely be 
removed one step further back; for it would then be neces- 
sary to explain the raison d’étre of the earlier servile status. 
The theory that the colonate arose out of the necessities 





o te, - 
Z ~ ig : 


iy AUTHOR'S PREFACE | [12 


of tax administration, while it contains certain elements of 
plausibility, fails to be completely satisfactory in account- 
ing for such a revolutionary change as the transformation 
of the free tenantry into a semi-servile class bound to the 
soil. "® large | and reliable revenue was indeed absolutely 
necessary to meet the cost of maintaining the reatest wey 
the world has ever known. Yet for centuries the admi 
tration had found the tribute sufficient to meet its a 
without proving an insupportablé burden to the tax-payers. 
The theorist who would prove that the coloni were attached 
to the soil to facilitate the collection of taxes will not have 
established an acceptable theory simply by showing that an 
intimate relation existed between the adscription of the 
coloni and the administration of taxation; for he still has 
the more important task of explaining why taxation fweighed 
so heawily upon the citizens of the late Roman Empire that 
the old system of tax-coltection proved inadequate and that 
it was necessary to resort to methods a altogether out of har- 
mony ny with the whole character of Roman institutions; and 
if he would follow this to its logical conclusion he would be 
brought face to face with the problem of the decay of Roman 
civilization itself. 

It seems to the writer that the adscriveee of the tenantry 
to the soil can only be properly understood when it is con- 
sidered in close ction with the causes which led to the 
decline of the Roman Empire. Previous types of servile 
tenure may have had some influence in moulding the exact 
form which the colonate assumed. The exigencies of tax- 
ation may have been the actual occasion which led a 
worried emperor to take the drastic step of binding the coloni 
to the soil. But had the Empire been in a vigorous con- 
dition no such measure would ever have been considered. 
No nation has ever had greater respect for law and custom 

GPa eats Romans, and the arbitrary creation of a serf class 


13 | AUTHOR’S PREFACE 


wk 
would have been unthinkable except to meet_a cx 


emergency. And this supreme emergency, in the opinion of: 
the eee. was no less a crisis than the threatened débacle axle 1 
of ancient civilization itself. bie Wig? 
In the following pages, after a brief account of the con- ==> 
dition of the coloni as they are described by the Codes, the 
writer will present in some detail the various theories which 
have been advanced in explanation of the origin of the 
colonate and the classical and epigraphical texts upon which 
these theories are based. Such a review of the theories of 
the colonate has not been made since Heisterbergk’s Entste- 
hung des Colonats* in 1876; and as much new material has 
been discovered in Africa and Egypt in the past two genera- 
tions modern scholars have been able to deal with the prob- 
lem of the origin of the colonate Scaeitons more ad- 
eq uately than Heisterbergk and hi is_predecessors. In the 
last two chapters the writer will trace the history of the 
Roman tenantry and show how their condition was affected 


aR ESN 


in the course of time by what appears to_ have. been a a decline 
in the fertility of the soil, first in Italy and later in the 


provinces. Finally attention will be called to the sources 
which seem to point to the fact that the soil of the Empire 
was becoming completely exhausted in many districts; and 
the thesis will be presented that the coloni were bound to 
the soil to enforce the cultivation of the fields which did not 
yield a large enough product to induce cultivation for the 
sake of individual profit and which would otherwise have 
been deserted—a disaster of such serious consequences that 
it threatened the continued existence of the Roman Empire. 

Grateful acknowledgment must be made of the writer’s 
indebtedness to Professor Simkhovitch, at whose suggestion 
this study was made, and whose teachings have been the 
source of many of the writer’s ideas. He has shown an 











1Pp. 1-62. 


14 AUTHOR’S PREFACE [14 


unflagging interest in the work and has been most generous 
in giving his time in advice and criticism. Professor 
Donald MacFayden of Washington University has read 
several chapters of the manuscript and has made many valu- 
able suggestions. The author is also indebted to Professor 
Harrison R. Steeves and Dr. Emery E. Neff of the English 
Department of Columbia University, to Professor Steeves 
for coining the word “ adscription” and to Dr. Neff for 


helpful suggestions. 
ROTH CLAUSING 


CONTENTS 


ee RETO gh ead ah Call clo k a Ae lide LoVe cbaetete 
By Vladimir G. Simkhovitch. 

ERE CACTNES OO teh tir eee ile, ebime et et viel ale vatety le. 
CHAPTER I 

ME ECTIRIEEMRT ENG COUEG iio v's. .c) ae 60) oie, w/e este ke wie) aoe ee. 
CHAPTER II 

MURMUR CREE SU cL tis toe esa ha* eG, ess Sctatieds. u-/erw le ae elk 
CHAPTER III 

Perecmgeuiian ane tatty PHeOrieS s/s 6) ek ee ei ee ee 
CHAPTER IV 

The Theory of Administrative Pressure ..........e0.- 
CHAPTER V 


The African Inscriptions and the Colonate: 


CHAPTER VI 


The African Inscriptions and the Colonate: 


CHAPTER VII 


| EE ECR CTE Fh AST, ol.) 6.0/0.) of co dea Wea Se TR pales eel ee 


CHAPTER VIII 


PENCE OU INE REDUDLICY oo eyed isi nfo spd ale wile Ree se ta is 


15] 


I. 1879-1890... . 


11. :1862-1007 2) a: 


138 


171 


16 CONTENTS [16 


PAGE 

CHAPTER IX 
TheAdsceription to the Soul.) 4ce 5 «anes une g + glee oe 262 
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY + « .) 4 ¢(s)\s 00!) «5 le ellen 318 


CEA OTe 


THE COLONI OF THE CODES 


THE most definite information which is to be found con- 
cerning the colonate is contained in the Roman Codes. But 
even there, although the coloni are mentioned in almost one 
hundred and thirty imperial constitutions,’ the information 
concerning their condition is neither as ample nor as precise 
as we should desire. The first certain reference in the Codes 
to coloni bound to the soil was in a rescript of Constantine 
of 332 A. D.? This constitution, however, is not the orig- 
inal law which established the colonate but merely a regula- 
tion which provided that coloni who had fled from the land 
to which they were attached should be returned and pun- 
ished.~The-law which first created the colonate, if indeed 
it Was included in the Codes, at any rate has not been pre- 
served. Nor do the Codes, as they have come down to us, 
contain a general law which fixed with precision the legal 
status of the coloni and stated definitely what rights the 
coloni enjoyed and what obligations they owed to their land- 
lords and to the state. Most of the constitutions in which 
the coloni are mentioned were not directly concerned with 
the coloni as such. The maintenance of agriculture and the 
uninterrupted collection of the imperial taxes were the prin- 
cipal objects of these imperial rescripts. The coloni, for the 
most part, were only mentioned incidently.* 

1For the complete list of texts see Bolkestein, De Colonatu Romano 
ejusque Origine, pp. 181-187. 
2 Cod. Theod., xi, 17,1. Ed. Mommsen and Meyer (Berlin, 1905). 


3 Coloni was the most common designation used in the Codes for agri- 
17] 17 


18 THE ROMAN COLONATE [1s 


However, the information contained in the Codes is suffi- 
cient to offer a fairly adequate understanding of the legal 
status of the coloni from the time of Constantine to the time 


of Justinian.” The colonus occupied a position in society 
which was legally not. thal 6a slave, HOC TREDE a freeman, 
but was an intermediate condition between the two which 
posseosed cons Cianrefeisics ot each. Coloni (adscrip- 
ticu.) were placed in opposition both to freemen ees) 
and slaves (servt) in a rescript of Justinian of 530.2 A 
law of Theodosius I, Arcadius, and Honorius declared that 
coloni “should be regarded as freemen in their personal 
condition yet they should be held as slaves of the land itself 
on which they were born.” * The law of Constantine of 
332, which is our first certain reference to serf-coloni, stated 
that “those coloni, who are planning flight, should be re- 
duced by bonds to a slave's status, so that they may be com- 
pelled by virtue of a slave’s condemnation to perform tasks 
which are befitting free persons.” * Again, in 409, in settling 
a tribe of the Huns within the Empire the Emperors Hon- 
orius and Theodosius II decreed that they should be dis- 


cultural tenants bound to the soil. But we also find the terms adcripticiu, 
tributarti, inquilini, originarii, originales, censiti, censibus adscripti, 
censibus obnoxti, and other appellations which were used as practically 
synonymous to coloni. For references see Bolkestein, op. cit., p. 36. 

1 For more complete accounts of the legal status of the coloni than that 
contained in this work see Savigny, “ Ueber den R6mischen Colonat,” in 
Vermischte Schriften (Berlin, 1850), vol. ii, pp. 1-40; Fustel de 
Coulanges, “Le colonat romain,” in Recherches sur quelques problémes 
@histoire (Paris, 1884), pp. 87-137. Terrat, Du colonat en droit romain 
(Versailles, 1872), pp. 17-84; Bolkestein, De Colonatu Romano ejusque 
Origine (Amsterdam, 1906), pp. 1-82. 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 48,21. Ed. Krueger and Mommsen (Berlin, 1904-1906). 

3 Cod. Just., xi, 52, 1. “...licet condicione videantur ingenui, servi 
tamen terrae ipsius cui nati sunt aestimentur.” 

* Cod. Theod., v, 17, 1. “Ipsos etiam colonos, qui fugam meditantur, 
in servilem condicionem ferro ligari conveniet, ut officia, quae liberis. 
congruunt, merito servilis condemnationis compellantur inplere.” 


19 | THE COLONI OF THE CODES 19 


tributed to landlords as coloni. ‘‘ Moreover,” continued the 
rescript, ‘‘ the landlords shall see to it that their services are 
those of freemen , . . and no one shall be permitted to drag 
them into slavery.” * The services of freemen which were 
required of the coloni, were certain specified kinds of farm 
work (ruralia obsequia) * and not the wholly arbitrary 
duties which a master could require of his slaves. 

The colonus possessed certain rights which the slave did 


_not enjoy. He could contract a legal marriage * which was | 
not possible for a_slave.* He could become a priest ® or a 
soldier,® both of which occupations were closed to slaves.” 
However, it was not possible for the colonus to enter either 
of these vocations.of his own free will, but he was obliged 
to obtain the consent of the landlord in each instance; ® and, 
in case the colonus wished to become a priest, it was neces- 
sary for him in addition to secure another peasant to take 
up his plot of land.® ‘Consequently the freedom of the 
coloni to enter the army or priesthood was decidedly limited 
in practice, for ordinarily the proprietors would strenuously: 
object to allowing their tenants to leave. One of the obli- 
gations of the proprietors was to furnish recruits,° but 
Vegetius complained that they continually offered the army 
men of poor quality,** whom no doubt they had found useless 
for agriculture. 


1 Cod. Theod., v, 6, 3. “ Opera autem eorum terrarum domini libera 
(utantur) ...nullique liceat...eos in servitutem trahere.” 


2 Cod. Just., 1, 3, 16. 

8 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 24; xi, 69, 1, etc. Cf. Bolkestein, op. cit., pp. 34-35. 
4 Dig., xlviii, 20, 5, 1; Nov., 22, 10. 

PC.OUd.«) test. 1) 3,36, pr. 

6 Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 6; Nov. Val., vi, 1, I. 

1 Cod. Just., i, 3, 36, 1; Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 8. 

Se pas Just. 1,-3,°16; xii, 33, 3: 

COU. J sts, 1,.3, 16. 


10 Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 7. Cf. Karlowa, Rémische Rechtsgeschichté 
(Leipzig, 1885), vol. i, p. 921. 


1 Vegetius, De Re Militari, i, 7. 


20 THE ROMAN COLONATE [20 


The coloni could acquire personal property, which like 
the personal property of a slave was called peculium.* But 
while the peculium of the slave was legally under the owner- 
ship of his master * the peculium of the colonus was his own 
legal property and could not be taken away from him by 
the landlord. However, the colonus was not permitted to 
alienate any part of his peculium without the consent of the 
landlord,*? a measure which was found necessary no doubt 
to prevent any diminution in the productive equipment of 
the estate.* Besides personal property it was even possible 
for a colonus to acquire property in land in addition to the 
land which he held as a colonus.° Ordinarily, of course, 
the plots of land which the coloni acquired were very small,’ 
but occasionally we read of coloni possessing in their own 
name farms of more than twenty-five jugera.’ In case a 
colonus possessed a farm the land was registered in the tax- 
rolls under his own name and he paid the land tax directly 
and not through his landlord.* 

The colonus also possessed greater rights than a slave 
before the courts of law. Under the Republic the slave was 
almost wholly at the mercy of his master but under the Em- 
pire the slave was protected by the law against most crimes 
against his person.” However, in addition to protecting the 
colonus from injuries against his person or that of his 
family,*® the law permitted the colonus to appeal to the courts 


1 Cod. Theod., v, 19, 1; Cod. Just., xi, 48, 19; xi, 48, 23, 5. 

2 Cf. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, 1908), p. 187 
for references. 

5 Cod. Theod., v, 19, 1; Cod. Just., xi, 50, 2, 3. 

4 Cf. Savigny, op. cit., pp. 19, 28-29; Terrat, op. cit., pp. 62-64. 

5 Nov., 128, 14. Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4. 

® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4, “...quantulacumque possessio.” 

7 Cod. Theod., xii, 1, 33, “...quicumque ultra xxv iugera privato 
dominio possidens...” 

® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; xi, 48, 20, 3. 

®° Cf. Buckland, op. cit., pp. 36-38. 10 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 2. 


21] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 21 


in any question affecting his status asa tenant. If the land- 
lord arbitrarily raised the rent the colonus was given a right 
of action against him, first by Constantine,’ and later by 
Arcadius and Honorius.” In case a peasant denied that he 
was rightfully the colonus of a certain proprietor the de- 
termination of his condition was left to the jurisdiction of 
the courts. Finally, if a landlord had taken possession of 
land which a colonus claimed as a part of his tenancy the 
colonus was allowed to bring suit against the landlord to re- 
cover his holding.* 

The coloni thus possessed a number of rights which dis- 
tinguished them clearly from slaves. Yet in many respects 
their condition was very similar to that of the slaves. “ It 
is almost as though they (the coloni) were surrendered in 
a kind of servitude to those to whom they are subject for 
their annual dues and the obligations of their condition,” 
said a law of Arcadius and Honorius.’ ‘“ For what differ- 
ence can be found between slaves and coloni (adscripticit) ,” 
asked Justinian, “ since.each is placed under the power of 
his lord?” * Lik€ the slaves the coloni were subject to 
corporal punishments.’ If they deserted their holdings they 
were pursued as though they were servi fugitivi® But 
above all, they were chained to the soil with indissoluble and 
perpetual bonds.° They were “ slaves of the land on which 


1 Cod. Just., Xi, 50, I. * Code Justis eo: 

BC Od. 1 heod., iv, 23, I. 4 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, pr. 

esp ast, Xi. 50, 2,0’... his, quibus annuis functionibus et debito 
condicionis obnoxii sunt, paene est ut quadam servitute dediti videantur.” 

® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 21. “ Quae etenim differentia inter servos et adscrip- 
ticios intellegetur, cum uterque in domini sui positus est potestate? ” 

™ Cod. Theod., xvi, 5, 52, 4; xvi, 5, 54, 8. Justinian decreed that the 
chastisement of the coloni be moderate. Cod. Just., xi, 48, 24, “...talem 
hominem (colonum) castigatione moderata corrigere.” 

® Cod. Theod., v, 17, I. 

9 Cod. Just., xi, 51, 1. “...colonos quodam aeternitatis iure detineat, 
ita ut illis non liceat ex his locis quorum fructu relevantur abscedere nec 
ea deserere.” 


22 THE ROMAN COLONATE [22 


they were born.” * “ We decree that they are attached so 
completely to the soil,’ said the Emperors Honorius and 
Theodosius II, “ that they must not be removed for a single 
instant.” * 

The Codes contained numerous constitutions regarding the 
flight of the coloni. The matter was held to be so important 
that the governors of the provinces were made responsible 
to see that the coloni were returned, not to their masters, but 
“to their homes where they are inscribed in the census and 
where they were born and brought up.”* If the runaway 
colonus was captured he was put in chains and severely 
punished,” and possibly reduced to slavery.” In the time of 
‘Constantine the landlord who received the fugitive colonus 
was compelled to return him to his rightful owners and in 
addition pay his back taxes.° Later fines were levied on 
proprietors harboring refugee coloni which increased in 
severity in the course of time. In 386 A. D. the fine was 
a half pound of gold for receiving a runaway colonus from 
a private estate and a pound of gold for receiving a colonus 
from an imperial domain.’ During the reign of Arcadius 


“e 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 52,1. “‘...servi tamen terrae ipsius cui nati sunt.” 


*Cod. Just., xi, 48, 15. ‘‘...quos ita glebis inhaerere praecipimus, ut 
ne puncto quidem temporis debeant amoveri.” 

3 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 6. “ Omnes omnino fugitivos adscripticios colonos 
vel inquilinos sine ullo sexus muneris condicionisque discrimine ad antiquos 
penates, ubi censiti atque educati natique sunt, provinciis praesidentes 
redire compellant.” 

* Cod. Just., xi, 53, 1. “...revocati vinculis poenisque subdantur.” 

5 This is not stated in the Codes. But in the interpretatio to the edict 
of Constantine of 332 (Cod. Theod., v, 17, 1) it says, “Ipse vero 
(colonus) qui noluit esse quod natus est, in servitium redigatur.” The 
interpretatio to the Theodosian Code was prepared about seventy years 
after the publication of the Code in 438 (Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., 
p. 103) and consequently nearly two centuries after the edict of Con- 
stantine, when the punishment for flight of the coloni had become more 
severe and the difference between slaves and coloni very slight. 


® Cod. Theod., v, 17, I. ™ Cod. Theod., v, 17, 2. 


23] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 23 


and Honorius (395-408) the landlord who kept a fugitive 
colonus on his estate was compelled to pay a fine to the 
Treasury of twelve pounds of silver, while, in addition, he 
was required to give a colonus of equal value to the former 
landlord of the colonus besides restoring the fugitive to 
him.’ During the same reign the fine was two pounds of 
gold for receiving a runaway colonus in Thrace.? In the 
next century, when patronage developed in the Roman Em- 
pire and coloni who were discontented with their landlords 
found a refuge by escaping to powerful patrons, fines as 
high as one hundred pounds of gold were levied against 
those who could pay such a sum, while those who could not 
were punished-with the complete confiscation of their prop- 
erty: 

But if the colonus was not allowed to leave the estate to 
which he had been attached, no more could his landlord 
separate-him-from-his plot of land. In case an estate was 
sold the coloni and agricultural slaves went with itt The 
sale of an estate without the coloni was of no effect. Al 
purchaser of an estate was not allowed to bring in new 
coloni to replace those already cultivating the land nor could 
he use slaves for this purpose.® 

Thus the colonus is revealed by the Codes as a small 
tenant whose most noticeable characteristic was his legal 
attachment to the soil. He cultivated his own land and re- 
ceived the product of his fields * which he marketed himself.* 
As a payment for the use of the land he owed a yearly rental 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 12. 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 52, I. 

8 Cod. Just., xi, 54, 1 (468 A. D.). 

* Cod. Just., xi, 48, 7. 

5 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 2. 

* Cod. Just., xi, 63, 3. 

™ Cod. Just., xi, 51, 1. “...quorum fructu relevantur.” 
® Cod. Theod., xiii, 1, 3; 8; 10. 


24 THE ROMAN COLONATE [24 


to the landlord which was usually called reditus.* The 
nature and amount of the rent was fixed by custom. The 
rent was ordinarily paid in kind unless a money payment 
had become customary.” Likewise the amount of the rent 
was fixed by custom*® and the important consequence fol- 
lowed from this that it could not be raised. If the landlord 
attempted to force the coloni to increase their payments the 
rights of the coloni to the customary rent could be defended 
in the courts.* In the words of a rescript of Justinian: 


Let the proprietors take care that they inflict no innovation nor 
violence upon the coloni. For if the proprietors are guilty of 
any such action, the moderator of the province himself shall take 
complete charge of the matter; and he shall see that the coloni 
are recompensed for any injury which they have received, and 
that the old customary rent is observed. This law applies not 
only to the actual coloni but to their posterity of whatever age 
or sex ; and we decree that the offspring of the coloni once born 
on the estate shall always remain in possession under exactly the 
same conditions which we have defined for their ancestors on 
the estates of others.® 


Whether the coloni owed customary work on the land- 
lord’s estate in addition to their rent is unfortunately one 
of the questions concerning which we have almost no infor- 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, passim; xi, 48, 23, 2; Cod. Theod., x, 1, 11. 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 5. 

® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, I. 

4 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 1 and 2. 

® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23, 2. “‘Caveant autem possessionum domini...~ 
aliquam innovationem vel violentiam eis inferre. Si enim... aliquid tale 
fuerit perpetratum, ipse provinciae moderator omnimodo provideat et 
laesionem, si qua subsecuta est, eis resarcire et veterem consuetudinem 
in reditibus praestandis eis observare...et hoc tam in ipsis colonis 
quam in subole eorum qualiscumque sexus vel aetatis sancimus, ut et 
ipsa semel in fundo nata remaneat in possessione sub isdem modis isdemque 
condicionibus, sub quibus etiam genitores eius manere in alienis fundis 
definivimus.” 


25] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 25 


mation. Services of the coloni (operae) are mentioned only 
once in the Codes. ‘A constitution of Valentinian I, Valens, 
and Gratian of 371 said that a proprietor who had received 
a fugitive colonus on his land owed the original landlord of 
the colonus among other things compensation for the ser- 
vices of the colonus and for the loss which his absence en- 
tailed on his home estate.* It seems somewhat hazardous 
to infer from this one passage that the coloni_were accus- 
tomed to furnish services to their landlords. Yet A’frican 
inscriptions of the second century show that the tenants on 
the great African domains were required to work from six 


to twelve days a year on the demesne land,’ while peasants _- 


on municipal lands were held accountable for certain annual 
hand and team services;* and the polyptyques drawn up 
under Charlemagne show that the coloni as well as the serfs 
owed services on the demesne.* 

Besides their payments to the proprietor the coloni owed 
taxes ‘and services- tothe state. Their principal fiscal obli- 
gation was the payment of the poll tax ° (capitatio humana 
or plebeia), It was on this account that they were in- 
scribed in the census and were BCT reDEs in the 


As a ae ee 


"3 script? _ The ¢ tax SpHad any to aria hadied srt work: 
ing on the estate, as children and old people were exempt,’ 
and women were assessed at a lower rate than men, some- 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 53, 1, I. “...maneatque eos poena, qui alienum et 
incognitum recipiendum esse duxerint, tam in redhibitione operarum et 
damni, quod locis, quae deseruerant factum est...” 

2 Cf. fra, pp. 139-140, 143. 

3 Cf. the lex coloniae Genitivae in Mommsen, “ Decret des Commodus,” 
Hermes, vol. xv, p. 406. Ephém. épigraph., vol. ii, p. 110. 

4¥For references see Fustel de Coulanges op. cit., pp. 179-183. 

5 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; xi, 48, 23, pr.; xi, 55, I 

® Cf. Savigny, op. cit., pp. 33-34 for references. 

™ Cod. Theod., xiii, 10, 4 and 6; Dig., L, 15, 3; Lactantius, De Mort. 
Persecut., 23. 


26 THE ROMAN COLONATE [26 


times at one-half and sometimes three-fourths.* Colont 
who had been drafted into the army received immunity from 
the poll tax not only for themselves but after a certain period 
of services for their wives as well.” The tax was ordinarily 
advanced by the landlord * who could himself recover it from 
the colonus, unless the custom of the estate prescribed that 
the colonus pay the tax directly.* In addition to the poll 
tax the coloni were obligated to the government for certain 
annual services called sordida_munera, _publicae functiones, 
or annuae functiones.© These included a varied assortment 
of duties such as carrying services with wagons-and oxen or 
packhorses on the public roads; the preparation.of flour, the 
making of bread, and services in the bakehouse; the supply 
of building materials, the construction and repair of public 
and sacred buildings; the maintenance of roads and bridges, 
id or 
: There were four ways in which a person might become a 
colonus, by birth, by. ‘prescription, by Voluntary agreement, 
or by | governmental constraint. The ordinary source 
of the supply of coloni was birth. From this the names 
originarit, originales, and colom origimarit were derived, 
which were very common designations of the coloni in the 
Codes.’ If both parents were coloni the children continued 
“to belong to the land which once their fathers undertook 
to cultivate.” ° Even if the son of a colonus had entered the 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 10. 

2 Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 6. 

3 Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 14 and 26; Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; xi, 48, 20, 5. 

* Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, 5. 

5 Cod. Theod., xi, 16, 18; Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, 5; xi, 48, 23, 5; xi, 50, 2 

® Cod. Theod., xi, 16, 18. Cf. Seebohm, English Village Com aaety 
(London, 1905), pp. 296-299. 

7 Cf. Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; 7; 11; xi, 68, 1; Cod. Theod., v, 18, 1; 
et passim. 

8 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23, 1. “... terrae inhaereant, quam semel colendam 
patres eorum susceperunt.” 


27] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 27 


army at an early age (parvulus)* or had been absent from 
the estate for forty years or more,” he could still be recalled 
by the landlord on the occasion of the death or incapacity 
of his father. 

Marriages between coloni on the same estate were the 
only ones not frowned upon by the proprietors and the state. 
But frequently children were born of parents not of the same 
legal status and it was necessary for the legislator to deter- 
mine their condition. The offspring of the union of a slave 
and a colonus were held to be slaves or coloni according to 
the status of their mother.* If the father were a freeman 
and the mother a colona, the children, following the same 
law, became coloni.* The opposite case, however, when the 
father was a colonus and the mother free, caused the legis- 
lators some difficulty as there was a conflict between the law 
of the contuberma, in which the child followed the condi- 
tion of its mother, and economic necessity of keeping a 
sufficient number of cultivators on the estates. Cons- 
equently the law underwent several changes. Before Jus- 
tinian the child of such a marriage became a colonus like 
his father.” Justinian, however, wishing to revive the old 
law, declared that the child should follow the condition of 
its mother and become free; but he gave the landlord of the 
colonus the right of compelling his tenant to separate from 
his wife.® Later Justinian attempted to prevent such unions 
altogether,” but, failing in this, he returned to the policy of 
his predecessors and declared that the child, although free, 





1 Cod. Just., Xi, 64, II. 

Ged, Just, xi, 40,22, 3. 

3 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 21,1. “...matris suae ventrem sequatur et talis sit 
condicionis, qualis et genetrix fuit, sive ancilla sive adscripticia.” 


4 Cod. Theod., v, 18, 1, 4. 
5 Nov., 54, pr. 

6 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 24. 

™ Nov., 22, 17. 


28 THE ROMAN COLONATE [28 


should be attached in perpetuity to the estate which his 
father cultivated as a colonus.* 
“}—-A second way in which a man might become a colonus 
/ was by prescription. If a peasant lived on the same estate 
as a tenant for thirty years, at the end of that period he 
-became_a colonus.*_ He obtained hereditary rights over his 
tenement but at ie same time he was legally attached to the 
soil. However, he was free to leave the estate at any time 
before the expiration of the prescription period; and ap- 
parently the colonate was considered a desirable condition 
in certain districts for this law states that entrance into the 
colonate was as advantageous to the landlord as to the peas- 
ants.° The children of free tenants who entered the colonate 
It was Sey indeed, to baeoniey a colonus voluntarily 
without waiting the thirty-year period of prescription. It 
was ordained by Valentinian III that a stranger (advena) 
might enter_the colonate by marrying a colona and by de- 
claring in _court his desire to become a colonus.® Also a 
constitution of Justinian, evidently drawn wp to prevent 
persons from being brought into the colonate by force, 
decreed that two proofs were necessary to signify desire 
to enter the colonate, a declaration in court and a personal 
statement in which the applicant was required to state his 
desire to become a colonus without being “ constrained by 


1 Nov., 162, 2, Likewise the children born from the marriage of coloni 
of different estates were the cause of considerable difficulty to the legis- 
lators. After several changes the law finally declared that the children 
of such unions should be divided equally between the two estates, and if 
there should be an uneven number of children the odd child should go 
to the landlord of the mother. (Nov., 156, 1; 162, 3.) 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 19. 

STbid. “...hoc autem tam domino quam agricolis expedit.” 

4 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23. 

5 Nov. Val., xxx, 1, 5 and 6. 


29] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 29 


force or necessity.”’* And in the troubled times of the late 
Empire, Salvian, although he admitted that the colonate 
was an “abject yoke,” * virtually advised small proprietors 
to give up their lands, heavily overburdened with taxes, and 
become coloni of the rich.® 

Finally, persons might be brought into the colonate 
through special governmental constraint. A law of Gratian, 
Valentinian II, and Theodosius I of 382 declared that 
beggars and vagabonds who were young and able-bodied 
shoiild | become the perpetual coloni of proprietors. who in-. 
formed _against.them;* and in 409 a constitution of Hon- 
orius and Theodosius II provided that a whole barbarian 
tribe shouldbe distributed among variousproprietors as 
coloni.® — 

Was it possible for a man once a colonus to be freed from 
that condition? “Arslave could be manumitted by the will 
of his master, but we have record of no law which gave a 
landlord the right to~free-his-colonus. “No personal ex- 
ceptions, no official decision, no authority of the census can 
free coloni by birth from their obligations,” declared a re- 
script of Arcadius and Honorius.* According to a law of 
Justinian, “a lord is able to free.a_slave with his peculium., 





1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 22, 2. “Sin autem et scriptura et post scripturam 
confessio seu depositio, sine vi et necessitate tamen, intervenerit...tunc 
ex utroque genere obligationis, id est tam scripturae quam confessionis 
vel depositionis, talem eum esse credendum, qualem et 5 aed et inter 
acta deposuit.”’ 


2Salvianus, De Gubernat. Det, v, 8, 44. 

8 Tbid., v, 8, 43. “Itaque nonnulli eorum de quibus loquimur qui aut 
consultiores sunt aut quos consultos necessitas fecit...fundos maiorum 
expetunt et coloni divitum fiunt.” 

4Cod. Theod., xiv, 18, 1; Cod. Just., xi, 26, I. 

5 Cod. Theod., v, 6, 3. Cf. infra, pp. 34-35. 

® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 11. “ Originarios colonos nullis privilegiis, nulla 
dignitate, nulla census auctoritate excusari praecipimus.” 


“ ,.jugo inquilinae abjectionis.” 


30 THE ROMAN COLONATE [30 


and expel a colonus from his control with the land.”* This 
evidently implied, as Savigny has said, that a landlord could 
not expel his colonus_except with the plot of land which he 
was accustomed to cultivaté>—It was possible, indeed, in the 
fifth century for-coloni to be freed by prescription of thirty 
or forty years from the obligations of one estate by becom- 
ing coloni in another,* or by becoming subject to the obliga- 
tions of municipal collegia.* But this was abolished by 
Justinian who decreed that no period of prescription was 
sufficient to free a colonus from his native estate.” In fact 
under Justinian the only method by which a man born in the 
colonate could free himself was to become a priest, after he 
had furnished a substitute to occupy his tenement,°® and then 
to rise to the rank of bishop,‘ a circumstance which of course 
must have been exceedingly rare. 

Thus the Codes are able to present a fairly adequate pic- 
ture of the coloni of the late Empire. They were tenants 
on the estates either of the great proprietors or of the crown 
who, although legally freemen, were attached in perpetual 
bonds to the soil. It was a condition so utterly dissimilar 
to the coloni as des¢ribed in the Digest by the great jurists 
of the second and third centuries that scholars in the fields 
of Roman law and ancient history from the time of Cujacius 
and Gothofredus have felt it necessary to offer some ex- 
planation of the origin of the coloni of the Codes. Our 
next task, therefore, is to examine the theories of the colo- 
nate presented by these writers. 

1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 21, 1. “...et possit (dominus) servum cum peculio 
manumittere et adscripticium cum terra suo dominio expellere.” 

2 Savigny, op. cit., pp. 35-36. 

3 Cod. Theod., v, 18, 1; Nov. Val., 26, 4 and 6; 30, pr. 

4 Cod. Theod., xii, 19, 2. 

5 Cod. Just., Xi; 48, 23,3} 43 5. 

® Cod. Just., i, 3, 16; Nov., 123, 17. 

7 Nov., 123, 4. 


CHAPTER II 


EARLY THEORIES 


THE first explanation of the origin of the colonate ap- 
peared in the works of the early Latin commentators on 
Roman law, Cujacius and Jacobus Gothofredus. In 1577, 
Cujacius, in his commentary on the Digest of Justinian, 
found it necessary to explain the earns of the word 
inguilinus—asit was used in the passage, “if anyone has 
bequeathed. inguilini without the estates to which they are 
‘united, t —isonull and void:’*~ The imquilint, 
ujacius explained, were peasants united forever to their 
estates together with their children.* An hereditary class of 
serf-peasants, he maintained, existed in Italy from early 
times to late, but under different names. They were known 
as operartt (laborers) during the Republic, as inquilint or 
colom at the time of the jurists of the Digest and of the 
earlier constitutions of the Codes, and as adscriptici, those 
inscribed in the register of an estate, in the later laws of 
the Codes. The serf-colonate of the Codes in the opinion 
of Cujacius, therefore, was not a new condition peculiar to 
the late Empire, but one which had always existed in Italy. 

Gothofredus, on the other hand, in his commentary on 
the Theodosian Code in 1665, traced the origin of the colo- 
nate to the barbarian dedititis who surrendered themselves 
to the Romans and who were set to the work of cultivating 






1 Dig., xxx, I, 112, pr. “Si quis inquilinos, sine praediis quibus ad- 
haerent, legaverit: inutile est legatum.” 
2 Cujacius, Opera (edition of Paris, 1658), vol. iv, part i, p. 1145. 
“Hi (inquilini) praediis perpetuo adhaerebant cum progenie sua.” 
31] 31 


32 THE ROMAN COLONATE [32 


land within the Empire “under the fixed laws of the census 
and the capitation tax.” * He derived his theory from the 
use of the expression “ dediti” in a passage of the Justinian 
Code, “ paene est ut (coloni) quadam servitute dediti vide- 
antur,’ * and these coloni “ who seem to have surrendered 
themselves in a kind of servitude,” he identified with the 
many known cases of barbarian dedititw. 

The first comprehensive treatment of the colonate as a 
legal and economic institution was undertaken by Savigny 
in his essay, Ueber den Romischen Colonat, in 1822.* After 
an exposition of thelegal status of.the.colonus as revealed 
by the constitutions of the Codes, which has never since 
been surpassed, Savigny proceeded to discuss the various 
ways the colonate may _ have arisen. The opinion of Gotho- 
fredus, that the colonate grew out of the custom of receiving’ 
conquered barbarians in the Empire as dedititu, Savigny 
cast aside as untenable; for he believed that there was no 
evidence extant which would warrant identifying the serf- 
coloni of the Codes with the barbarian dedititu.* Neither 
did Savigny hold that the conjecture of Cujacius was more 
acceptable, that colonus was merely another designation for 
the earlier servile operarius; for again evidence is completely 
lacking to show that the operarius was an hereditary serf.° 
Two types of earlier semi-servile relationships, considerably 
more like the colonate than the operaru of the Republic, 


1 Gothofredus, Codex Theodosianus cum Perpetuis Commentarus, 
v, 9, I (edition of Lyons, 1665), vol. i, p. 455. “‘ Mens ea mihi colonos 

..fuisse ‘dedititios’...qui scilicet cum sese ex barbaris nationibus 
dededissent, alienis fundis colendis operam suam addixerant sub certa 
census et capitationis lege.” 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 2. 


3 Abhandlungen der historisch-philologischen Klasse der komglichen 
Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1822, pp. 1-26. 


* Tbid., p. 24. 
5 Ibid., p. 22. 


33] EARLY THEORIES 33 


were the ancient Roman clients and the German tenant- 
slaves described by Tacitus.* But while there was a certain 
degree of general resemblance (allgemeine Aehnlichkeit) 
between these earlier institutions and the late Roman colo- 
nate, Savigny failed to see any historical connection between 
them.’ 

There were, however, in Savigny’s opinion, two possible 
W oy Gast might have originated. Frree- 


the colon colorate of their own-volitiony or-coloni- may have been 


recruited from slaves by a limited manumission. Yet, 
Savigny saw risny saw such cogent objections to the acceptance of 
either of these explanations that he hesitated to advocate 
the one or the other as a well-grounded theory. The only 
definite historical text in regard to the entrance into the 
colonate, which was known at the time Savigny wrote his 
essay, seemed to favor the first hypothesis. Salvian, writ- 
ing in the fifth century after Christ, complained that small 
landholde lers-were-so burdened with the taxes that they found 
it preferable to ave up their land altogether and become 


caro 


coloni of the rich. Whether this was a common practice 


ee, 


affecting a ole class of the population and not merely 
isolated individuals Savigny felt that it was impossible to 


1 Tbid., pp. 22, 25. Tacitus described these tenant-slaves as follows: 
“Their other slaves they do not employ in our fashion as an organized 
staff of domestics. Each has a lodging and home of his own. The lord 
requires of him a share of grain, or of live stock, or of clothing, as 
from a tenant (colonus) ; but the slave renders no service beyond this.” 

Germania 25. “ Ceteris servis, non in nostrum morem descriptis per 
familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penatos regit. 
Frumenti modum dominus, aut pecoris, aut vestis, ut colono, injungit: et 
servus hactenus paret.” 

3 Savigny, op. cit., p. 25. .. aber eine historische Verbindung zwischen 
denselben anzunehmen, scheint mir durchaus kein Grund vorhanden.” 


$ Ibid., p. 23. Cf. Salvian., De Gubernatione Dei, v, 8, 43. “...fundos 
majorum expetunt et coloni divitum fiunt.” 


sé 
° 


- 


Cs 


34 THE ROMAN COLONATE [34 


decide from the evidence of this one reference. The Jus- 
tinian Code indicated that entrance into the colonate by free- 
men, while permitted, was-considerably lim limited,’ and volun- 
tary entrance into a dependent condition was certainly con- 
trary to the general principles of the earlier Roman law. 

The other possible explanation of the origin of the colo- 
nate, according to Savigny, was to trace the condition of the 
coloni to a manumission of slaves, which was limited in 
such a way that while the slave was allowed personal free- 
dom he was at the same time bound forever to the soil. The 
fact that the landlord of the colonus and the master. of the 
slave were both spoken of as patronus lent a certain degree 
of support to this view. Yet the limited manumission of 
a slave was-as contrary to the fixed principles of Roman law 
as the voluntary entrance of a freeman into a semi-servile 
statis: ~~ Lacking the evidence of any statutory enactment, 
Savigtiy believed that neither hypothesis could be definitely 
maintained.* 

Not long after the publication of Savigny’s treatise, two 
important documents of antiquity were discovered, both of 
which contained precious information in regard to the colo- 
nate. The first of these finds was the Coustitutio de Scyris 
discovered in 1824. It was a decree of the Emperors 
Honorius and Theodosius II of the year 4og A. D., regu- 
lating the settlement of a barbarian tribe, the Scyrae, on 
Roman land. The edict reads as follows: 


We have subjugated the Scyrae, a barbarian tribe of the Huns. 
Wherefore we grant to all (proprietors) the opportunity of 
stocking their fields with men from the above mentioned tribe, 
so that all may know that these barbarians are to be incorpor- 
ated on their estates (apud se) in no other legal condition than 
that of the colonate. When once the coloni have been assigned 


1Cf. supra, pp. 28-20. 
* Savigny, op. cit., p. 24. 


35] EARLY THEORIES 35 


to any proprietor no one will be permitted to coax any one (of 
them) away fraudulently (from his estate), nor to receive a 
fugitive, under the (same) penalties which have been prescribed 
in regard to those receiving coloni inscribed in the census of 
other districts, or (in receiving) any coloni not their own. 
Moreover the landlords are to employ them (the Scyrae) only 
in the work of free men. No one will be permitted to make 
slaves of them or to set them at work in cities. On account of 
the scarcity of grain, it will be permitted to keep them in the 
Transmarine provinces and to attach them to estates for- 
ever. ... The furnishing of recruits also will be remitted 
for twenty years.* 


This law was introduced into Wenck’s edition of the Theo- 
dosian Code, with the comment? that the whole class of 
coloni originated by barbarians being settled in Roman 
territory in this fashion, a theory which renewed on a more 
substantial foundation the hypothesis originally set forth 
by Gothofredus. 

The other important find was the discovery of an edict 
of a prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander, in 68 
A. D., which was published along with a commentary by 
Rudorff in 1828.* The edict was an answer to complaints 
which the property holders of Alexandria had made against 


1 Cod. Theod., v, 6(4), 3. “ Scyras, barbaram nationem... (Hun)norum 
...subegimus. Ideoque damus omnibus copiam ex praedicto genere 
hominum agros proprios frequentandi, ita ut omnes (scia)nt suscepios 
non alio iure quam colonatus apud se futu(ros): nullique licere ex hoc 
genere colonorum ab eo cui semel adtributi fuerint, vel fraude aliquem 
abducere vel fugientem suscipere, poena proposita, quae recipientes alienis 
censibus adscribtos vel non proprios colonos in(seq)uitur. Opera autem 
eorum terrarum domini libera (utantur):...ac nulli liceat...eos... 
(in se)rvitutum trahere urbanisve obsequiis addicere. Licet...pro rei 
frumen(tari)ae angustiis in provinciis transmarinis...eos retinere et 
postea in sedes perpetuas (conl)ocare...Iuniorum quoque intra... vigint: 
an(nos p)raebitione cessante...” 


? Book v, title 4, constitution 3, p. 286, note x. 
3 Rheinische Museum fiir Philologie, ii (1828), pp. 64-84; 133-190. 


36 THE ROMAN COLONATE [36 


certain illegal exactions of the provincial government of 
Egypt under Nero; and Tiberius Julius Alexander, the pre- 
fect of the Emperor Galba, promised a rectification of their 
wrongs. “ For it is unjust,” he said, “ that those who have 
purchased property and paid the price for it, should be re- 
quired to pay rents in kind (éxdopea ) for their own estates 
like state peasants (Sypudoror yewpyot).* 

Who were these state peasants? Rudorff believed that 
they were a dependent class in the same economic condition 
asthe hereditary tenantry (-yewpyot) tentioned by Herodo- 

tus eiedene in their descriptions of ancient Egypt and 
of which some traces are to be found in the Egypt of the 
Ptolemies.* Also he held that their_condition was similar 
to that of the late Roman.coloni, who existed in Egypt as. . 
in Other-parts of the Empire. This similarity led him to 
suggest the hypothesis that there _was-a- continuous. historical 
development from the yewpyot . of Herodotus to the coloni of 
the late Roman Empire; that this development in Egypt was 
typical of the development in other lands; and that the 
coloni of the late Empire stood in an historical connection 
(in geschictlichem Zusammenhange) with earlier servile 
tenures.* 

In support of his thesis Rudorff called attention to a 
passage of Varro’s Rerum Rusticarum which dealt with the 
operarit, whom Cujacius had already described as the ser- 
vile predecessors of the coloni. “ All fields,’ said Varro, 
in the first century B. C., “are cultivated by slaves or free- 
men _or-beth:Among the freemen are those who cultivate 
the | lands themselves, paid laborers, and those whom our 


ancestors called operart, many of whom even 1 now are to 


1Jbid., p. 149. LI. 31-32. ‘* adixov ydp Eéore tod¢g wvycapuévoue KThuara Kai 
Tide aut@v arodévrac ac Snuootouc yeapyove Exddpia aratreiabat Tov tdiwy édagay,”’ 

7 Rudorff, op. cit., p. 179. 

3 Rudorff, loc. cit. 


37] EARLY THEORIES 37 


be found in Asia, Egypt, and Illyria.” * The operariz in 
Egypt, Rudorff believed, were identical to the semi-servile 
yewpyot, Thus, he said, these Egyptian peasants may have 
formed ithe original-sources of the colonate;in_ relation to 


“Swhich- the—other_sources of coloni were but “ “secondary 
imitations’ (secundare ‘Nachbildungen) 2 


1 ong caer age 


~- 


In the second edition of his essay on the colonate, which 
appeared in 1828,° Savigny took into account the theories 
of Rudorff and Wenck. Rudorff’s hypothesis that a semi- 
servile peasantry had existed in the provinces from the 
earliest times, Savigny regarded as the simplest and most 
natural way of accounting for the serf-colonate of the 
Codes. Yet in view of the meager historical evidence, he 
felt that such a theory could only be regarded “as a mere 
conjecture and not a positive assertion.” * Wenck’s theory 
of barbarian settlements, Savigny regarded as somewhat 
more satisfactory. The Constitutio de Scyris of 409 A. D. 
plainly stated that the tribe of Scyrae were distributed 
throughout the Empire as “ colon,’ and Savigny admitted 
that it would not be unlikely that the whole class of coloni 
might have originated by earlier barbarian settlements, 
similar to that of the Scyrae. Yet, he warned that such a 
conclusion did not by any means necessarily follow; for the 
colonate might have developed earlier from totally different 


1 Varro, R. R., i, 17, 2. “Omnes agri coluntur hominibus servis aut 
liberis aut utrisque: liberis, aut cum ipsi colunt...aut mercenariis... 
iique quos operarios nostri vocitarunt, ut etiam nunc sunt in Asia, et 
Aegypto et in Illyrico complures.” Most manuscripts have obaerarios or 
obaeratos (debtors) in place of operarios (laborers). Cf. ed. Goetz, 
Pp. 33- 

2 Rudorff, op. cit., p. 179. 

3 Zeitschrift fiir geschichtlichen Rechtswissenschaft, vi, 3, pp. 273-320. 
Also published in his Vermischte Schriften, 11, pp. 1-53. 

4Vermischte Schriften, ii, p. 48, “als blosse Vermuthung nicht als 
bestimmte Behauptung.” 


9 a) 


3 THE ROMAN COLONATE [38 
sources, and Honorius and Theodosius II may merely have 
incorporated the barbarian Scyrae into a class of society 
which had already long existed.* 

In 1830 the theory of Rudorff received the powerful sup- 
port of the great historian Guizot, then premier of France.” 
“TI see but three ways,” said Guizot, “of explaining the 
for mation, in 1 the heart ieee re ae such a class as a) a 


pa seal 


ee een conquest and force. T Che NC peas- 
antry may have been bound to the soil and forced to share 
t roducts of their labor with the conquerors. Or, 
secondly, the agricultural population, originally free, may 
havé-gradually lost its liber se Abaaibitn<inlsie encroachments of’ 
a governing aristocracy; whence_an “immobilisation des 
colons,’ the result not of conquest -and sudden violence but 
of. government and of legislation. inally “the existence 
of vena a class, the condition: -of- loni, may_have been _ 
an ancient fact, a survival of a primitive, natural, ‘social Or- 
ganization which neither conquest nor scientific oppression” 
adiarat and beh maintained itself 1 in this at Teast through: * 
This. ie SO Haiien mei to Guizot as the most 
probable. In the Germanic tribe, the clansman enjoyed the 
right of cultivating the lands of the chief in return for a 


1 Tbid., p. 51. 

* Cours @histoire moderne (Paris, 1829-30), vol. iv, pp. 230-251. 

* Tbid., p. 246. “ Je ne vois que trois maniéres d’expliquer, au sein d’une 
société, la formation d’une classe comme cette des colons, la réduction de 
la population agricole a un tel état.” 

*Tbid., p. 247. “ L’existence d’une telle classe, la condition des colons, 
est un fait ancien, débris d’une organisation sociale primitive, naturelle, 
qui n’avaient enfantée ni la conquéte, ni une oppression savante, et qui 
s'est maintenue, en cela du moins, a travers les destinées diverses du 
territoire.” 


; 
39 | EARLY THEORIES 39 


share of the produce and personal service to their leader in 
time of war. This seems to have been the social organiza- 
tion of all groups which bore the name of tribe, clan, or 
sept; and it was a condition quite similar (assez analogue ) 
to that of the Roman coloni. When the Romans conquered 
Gaul and other Celtic countries, they found the agricultural 
population in this state of semi-serfdom. After the con- 
quest, the condition of the cofiquered barbarians remained 
very nearly the same. The chiefs, such as Vercingetorix 
in Caesar’s Commentaries, had disappeared, but the Romans 
took their place. What the barbarian tenantry lost by way 
Of patriotic attachment to chiefs of their own ‘ blood, they 
gained in the more stable-order maintained by the Roman 
proptietors, so-that, at least_so far as their economic con- 


dition was concerned, they were better off by the change..*~ 


Thus, then, Guizot argued, the colonate was not the 
sudden work of conquest_nor the result of a slow transfor- 
mation wrought by legislation and aristocratic encroach- 
ment; but it was an ancient institution of tribal society little 
changed by Roman civilization. The Germans who con- 
quered Rome likewise had their own hereditary coloni 
cultivating their lands, and when the Roman power was de- 
stroyed, the condition of the peasantry continued as before 
in its original state through most of the Middle Ages, but 
little affected by the Roman influence.” 

In 1833, C. L. F. Schultz, another convert to the theory 
of Rudorff, published his Grundlegung zu emer geschicht- 
lichen Staatswissenschaft der Romer. In the section of his 
book on the coloni,? Schultz took Savigny severely to task 
for favoring, even with reservations, the theory of barbarian 
settlements. For even though one accepted the hypothesis 


'Tbhid., pp. 248-250. 
* [bid., pp. 250-251, 255. 
* OP. cit., pp. 339-353, 445-452. 


ae 


ey 
; 


f 


40 THE ROMAN COLONATE [40 


that previous barbarian settlements were made in a way 
similar to the settlement of the Scyrae in 409 A. D., it 
would be ridiculous, Schultz said, to suppose that the coloni, 
by far the most numerous class in a population of an em- 
pire of fifty million, could have originated from the rela- 
tively few barbarians who were settled within its borders 
as serfs instead of slaves. Yet the picture presented by 
the texts in regard to the coloni previous to the time of the 
Codes was a puzzling one, he admitted. In Italy, in the 
vicinity of Rome at least, the coloni were Roman citizens 
and free tenants until comparatively late times. The evi- 
dence from Pliny, Columella, and the jurists of the Digest 
permits no other conclusion. But Tacitus, when in the 
Germama* he compared the German serf to the Roman 
colonus, must have been thinking of an individual in a con- 
siderably lower economic and legal condition. How could 
this paradox be explained? 

Both in Italy and the provinces, dependent agricultural 
relationships went back to very early times, Schultz believed. 
In the early Republic the client of the patrician occupied a 
position of distinct hereditary dependence in relation to his 
patron.” He was most frequently a freedman, and his man- 
umission entailed a number of obligations to his former 
master. In case he was assigned to work on his patron’s 
iand he became a colonus, occupying his tenure in a semi- 
servile condition, bound with his children forever to his 
patron’s estate. The early Roman colonists in the Italian 
colonies were in an analogous condition of dependence; * 
and all the peoples whom Rome conquered became pere- 
grim from the earliest times, and held a dependent legal 


1Ch. 25. Cf. supra, p. 33. 
4 Schultz, of. cit., pp. 340-341. 
*Ibid., pp. 342, 352. 


AT] EARLY THEORIES AI 


condition in relation to Roman citizens and a dependent 
economic condition in relation to the ager publicus.* 

In Italy, at least in the districts close to the capital, the 
client-coloni and the hereditary tenantry disappeared. The 
coloni of Columella, Pliny, and the Digest held short-term 
leases and were undoubtedly absolutely free. But the older 
status of dependent agricultural relationship was retained 
in the provinces.” In many of these there was a continuous 
historical development of semi-servile tenures from the 
earliest times to the colonate of the Codes, as Rudorff had 
supposed in the case of Egypt. Thus the colonate was not 
a newly developed institution of the late Empire, but was 
directly connected with the servile tenures of the earliest 
times, through the dependent relationships of the peregrini 
in the provinces.* 

Diametrically opposed to the explanation of Schultz was 
the theory of Laboulaye, which next appeared.* The colo- 
nate of the Codes was not related to ancient conditions of 
serfdom nor the result of a single cause, he held, but was 
the outcome of two factors working together, both of 
which were intimately connected with contemporaneous 
social and economic conditions. In the late Empire the 
growing depopulation of the realm and the steady increase 
of waste and deserted land was the cause of grave concern 
to Roman statesmen; and both of these maladies vitally 
affected the imperial treasury. To check the first evil, slaves 
were given plots of land to which they were attached for- 
ever and encouraged to marry and have children; while to 
restore the agri deserti to cultivation, conquered barbarians 


1Tbid., pp. 445-446. 

2 Ibid., p. 446. 

3 Tbid., p. 451. 

4 Histoire du droit de propriété fonciére en occident (Paris, 1839), 
Pp. II5-119. 


42 THE ROMAN COLONATE [42 


were transplanted within the realm by emperors such as 
Claudius II, Constantius Chlorus, and Constantine. The 
barbarian captives were settled as coloni, as was definitely 
stated by the Constitutio-deScyris 0f 409 B. C.; and from 
of the late Empire.* fay 

The next writer, “Dureau de la Malle, whose Economte 
politique des Romains appeared in 1840, returned to the 
theory of early servile tenures. ‘Rudorff had called atten- 
tion to the Egyptian semi-servile yewpyés, Guizot had based 
his theory on the Celtic tribesman, while Schultz had found 
a relation between the colonus and the Italian client and 
provincial peregrinus. Dureau de la Malle, on the other 
hand, found the germ of the Roman colonate in conditions 
which existed in Greece and her colonies.” The sacred 
slaves (cépddovAe. ) who were attached to the service of the 
temples, such as the Veneru of Eryx in Sicily, the Daughters 
of Aphrodite in Corinth, and the hierodules of Camarca in 
the Pontus, differed from ordinary slaves in their absolute 
adscription to the temples. They could not be sold nor 
alienated in any way from the service of the temples by 
the priests, their masters. Similar to the sacred slaves were 
the Helots of Sparta, the Penestes of Thessaly, the Minoans 
of Crete, and the serfs of other Greek states. They owed 
certain fixed services and rents in kind to their lords, and 
could not be enfranchised nor sold out of the country.’ 
And Dureau de la Malle held that it was in these early Greek 
servile tenures that the origin of both the Roman colonate 
and medieval serfdom was to be found." 


1 Tbid., pp. 116-117. 
2 Op. cit., vol. i, p. 144. 
FAT Fe trapo, Vides 14 boii aA, 


“Toc. cit. 


43] EARLY THEORIES / 43 


In the first edition of his essay, Ueber den Rémischen 
Colonat, Savigny had admitted two possible ways in which 
the colonate might have originated, volfintary entrance into 
that condition by freemen, and’a ‘limited manumission, of 
slaves. “Yet lacking Page EASTER statutes legalizing such a 
transformation, he regarded either as contrary to the spirit 
of Roman private law, and so hesitated to advocate the one 
or the other. Savigny’s pupil, Puchta, however, was not 
so cautious in advancing an opinion as his master, and in 
his Cursus der Institutionen of 1841 he upheld the second 
of Savigny’s hypotheses. From the earliest times, he said, 
a distinction was made between the country slaves, the 
fanulia rustica, and the city slaves, the familia urbana.’ 
What the city slave gained by way of a share in the luxury 
and pleasures of the capital, he lost in the uncertainty of his 
position; for he might be sold or used for any purpose which 
might strike the arbitrary fancy of his master. But the 
slaves of the familia rustica were regarded differently, at 
least by lords who were interested in making the most of 
their property. They were considered as an intrinsic part 
of the estate, from which they were only separated by their 
master in case of dire necessity. In fact, their actual con- 
dition was practically the same as that which afterwards 
came_to be the legal condition of the colonate.* 

To transform this actual condition into a legal one would 
have a double advantage. It would increase the industry 
and interest of the slaves in their work by removing them 
from the danger of arbitrary mistreatment on the part of 
their masters, and at the same time it would insure the 
proprietors an increased income from their estates. But 
Puchta saw, as Savigny before him, that howsoever private 


' roth ed. (Leipzig, 1893), vol. ii, p. 98. 
* Tbid., p. 98. “Es war factisch nahezu derselbe Zustande, der nachher 
im Colonat zu einem rechtlichen wurde.” 


A4 THE ROMAN COLONATE [44 


landholders might have regulated the condition of their 
familia rustica, the public law upon which the colonate was 
established would not have been affected. “Jus publicum 
quod privatorum pactis mutary non potest.’ * Consequently, 
Puchta believed that some legislator enacted a law per- 
mitting 4 manumission of slaves which at the same time 
attached the freemen in_perpetuity- tothe estate of the 
master.” In this way a new status of society, midway be- 
tween slavery and freedom, was formed, and, as it proved 
advantageous to the interests of agriculture, the state per- 
mitted and later encouraged freemen to join it. 

A far more comprehensive treatment of the origin of the 
colonate was undertaken by Zumpt in his essay Ueber dte 
Entstehung und historische Entwickelung des Colonats which 
appeared in the Rheinisches Museum fiir Philologie in 1845. 
“The colonate,” he said, “‘ was a kind of serfdom created 
with the view of insuring a better cultivation of the land.” * 
From the time of the Gracchi the agri desertt had proved 
a more and more serious problem to the Roman government. 
During the period of foreign conquests, captives, imported 
by the thousands, were used as slaves on the latifundia of 
the rich. But-atfterthe-conquests_of Caesar there were no 
more important additions of slaves, and the 1e stretches of 
deserted land constantly Taree ee government, whose 
revenue was almost entirely derived from the land tax, 
found its income seriously impaired. The most effective 
and enduring means which it found to cope with the grow- 


1 Savigny, Vermischte Schriften, ii, p. 60. 

2 Puchta, of. cit., p. 98. “ Daher gestattete ein Gesetzgeber, Sclaven 
so freizulassen dass sie von dem Gut abhangig blieben, mit einem Wort 
Colonen wurden.” 

3 Op. cit., p. 2. “Der Colonat war eine Art von Ho6rigkeit, geschaffen 

..in der Absicht, um einen besseren Anbau des Landes zu veranlassen.” 





45] | 


ing evil was the nee 4 ofthe peasantry to the soil and 
the forced orced cultivation of the land—in short ‘the colonate.* 
There ere Were, in the o opinion o! of ‘Zumpt, ~two_ways in. which 
this important institution of the late Empire could have 
arisen. The colonate was either a natural development from 
Roman sources which finally was made fixed and permanent 
by law; or it was an artificial outgrowth from foreign 
sources. If the colonate was of native birth, it must either 
have arisen from _a depression in the status of the freeman 


or else 4 Tise in the status-of the ‘slave. There are some 


passages in Varro and the younger Pliny which might lead 
to the acceptance of the former view. “ All the fields,” said 
Varro in an often quoted passage, “are cultivated by slaves 
or freemen or both. ... Among the freemen are those 
whom our ancestors called debtors (obaerat:) and of whom 
there are a number even now in Asia, Egypt, and Illyria.” ° 
But Zumpt maintained that this passage of the first century 
B. C. indicated that the class of obaerati were dying out in 
Italy even at that time and only existed in some of the 
provinces, so this indebted class could not have been numer- 
ous enough to hav have been-the:sourc€ of the colonate.* 

In one of the letters of Pliny the Younger * mention was 
made of coloni who had fallen in arrears and who had been 
fitted out with cattle and tools by the landlord. Such debtor 
tenants may have been bound to the estate until they paid 
their debts. Yet there was a very great difference between 
these debtor tenants and the later coloni, for the debtors’ 
children were undoubtedly free to go any place they pleased, 
while the colonate was an hereditary status, affecting both 
the coloni and their descendants forever. To change the 


1 Ibid., pp. 4-6. 
2 Cf. supra, pp. 36-37. 
3 Zumpt, op. cit., p. 7. 
* Epist., ili, 19. 





ye THE ROMAN COLONATE [46 


AN free tenantry of the first century A. D. to the serf-coloni of 
b er the Codes a comprehensive general edict would have been 
| ,necessary. But there is absolutely no evidence of the exis- 


NY ‘tence of such an edict, and it is unlikely that a law, so con- 
ne trary to the general spirit of Roman jurisprudence, arbi- 
%) /trarily transforming the free peasant into a serf, was ever 


a 
<= 


/\  * promulgated.’ 
\ \ Even less likely, a argued, was the origin of the 


\ Law) 
Wa iy / color to be se result of a rise in the status of the 
" NG ee 


\) slave, as Puchta had asserted. Puchta had seen that such 


a change could not have arisen from a manumission limited 
by private agreement, for such a restricted manumission 
would have had no effect on the public law. He pve that — 
the transformation had been effected by a speci&l edict. But 


WW Zumpt protested that it was impossible that a law of such 
< fundamental importance should have so completely disap- 


AN 6 that no later reference to it was ever made. More- 








over the coloni were described as “ free-born” (ingenui) ;? 
») and it should be remembered that the slaves were far less 

‘ Y numerous than at the beginning of the Empire.* 
iS Since the colonate, then, could not be traced to native 
% \ \ elements, Zumpt believed that it must have been artificially 
“Sinduced from foreign sources. The Gracchi had settled 
ffoman citizens on the Italian ager publicus in the hope of 
reviving a sturdy peasantry which would keep the lands in 
cultivation and furnish the material for future legions. 
Sulla, Caesar, and Augustus had granted lands to their 
veterans for the same purpose. But none of these measures 
had succeeded. The population continued to decline un- 
checked and it eventually became necessary to enlist bar- 
barians in the rank and file of the Roman legions. Even 

1 Zumpt? op. cit., D8 , 


? Cod. Just., Xi, 52, 1. “...licet condicione videantur ingenui.” 


* Zumpt, op. cit., pp. 9-IT. 


47] EARLY THEORIES 47 


more serious were the consequences of the lack of man power 
on agriculture. The slaves and the native peasantry proved 
inadequate to keep the lands in cultivation and the Romans 
were compelied-to- import barbarians” S-again, this-time as 
cifltivators in the fields+— 

The reign of Marcus Aurelius saw the adoption of the 
new policy. The plague of 166 A. D. had wrought fright- 
ful gaps in the population and was followed by the severe 
wars with the Marcomanni. It was only with difficulty that 
Marcus could raise sufficient troops to defeat the barbarians, 
and, although victorious, he made no attempt to incorporate 
the conquered land in the Empire. Instead “he received 
the Marcomanni in surrender, very many being transported 
to Italy.’’* Other barbarian colonists were settled in Dacia, 
Pannonia, Moesia, and Germany.* 

The policy adopted by Marcus of granting to barbarians 
land within the Empire, was followed by many of his suc- 
cessors? and Zumpt has marshaled all the reférences to 
classical authors bearing on these settlements in imposing 
array. Claudius II, Aurelian, Probus, Diocletian and Max- 
imian, Constantius Chlorus, Constantine, Constantius I], 
Valentinian I, Gratian, Honorius and Theodosius II, all 
settled barbarians on land in Roman territory.* What was 
the legal condition of the barbarians after they were placed 
on Roman lands? They were not slaves, Zumpt argued, 
for they were allowed to carry on commerce with barbarians 
outside the Empire; and _in_addition they were used. for 
troops in the legions, which would have been impossible f for. 

slaves. And yet they couldtnot have been Freete sell or 
SS 


*Toid., p. 11. 

2 Julius Capitolinus, M. Antoninus, 22. “Accepitque in dediticnem 
Marcomannos, plurimis in Italiam traductis.” 

3 Dio, Ixxii, II. 

*Zumpt, op. cit., pp. 16-37. 


48 THE ROMAN COLONATE [48 


leave their land at their-own-volition,for otherwise all ad- 
vantage e of the. settlement-wvould_ have been lost. en the 


Gepidi and Vandals wandered away from the region where 
they had been settled by Probus, the emperor led his troops 
against them and almost annihilated them. The settled 
barbarians were not perhaps quite in the same condition as 
the later colonate, for there is no reference to overlords. 
They were in all probability settled on the imperial domains 
of the else where they were bound with their children 
in perpetuity.’ 

The accounts of these settlements from the first show that 
the barbarians were in a kind of servile condition. “ From 
the Goth,” said Trebellius Pollio, “the barbarian was made 
a soldier and_a colonus, and there was no_region-which did 
not have a Gothic slave in a kind of triumphal servitude.” * 

“The very places which perhaps they themselves had devas- 
tated with their depredations, they (the barbarians) were 
compelled to bring back to cultivation by servile labor,” said 
Eumenius in his Panegyric to Constantius.? They were 
spoken of as tributarit in the settlements of Constantius * 
and Valentinian,® a designation which was a syronym for 
coloni in the Codes. And finally in the Constitutio de Scyris 
the law specifically stated that “they are to be in no other 
legal status than that of the colonate.”’ ° 

The colonization of barbarians in the Empire formed then 


A 1 bid., p.. 15, 

2 Trebellius Pollio, Claudius, 9. “ Factus miles barbarus et colonus ex 
Gotho; nec ulla fuit regio quae Gothum servum triumphali quodam 
servitio non haberet.” 


7Ch. 8 “Cogerentur (barbari)...loca...quae fortasse ipsi deprae- 
dando vastaverant, culta redderent serviendo.” Cf. Zumpt, of. cit., p. 20. 


# Ammian., xix, II, 6. 

5 Ammian., xxviii, 5, 15. 

® Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4), 3. “...non alio iure quam colonatus apud 
se futuros.” Cf. Zumpt., op. cit., p. 36. 


49 | EARLY THEORIES 49 


the main body (Stamm) of the coloni. When this condi- 
tion WaSonceformed, it became possible, as the laws of the 
fourth century show,—for—fres-hornRomans-to enter the 
colonate.* Later, in 382 A. D., all beggars that were found 
in Rome who were capable of work _and_free-were forcibly 
added to fhe colonate: 2——Andas time went on the increasing 
lack of foodstuffs (Nahrungslosigkeit) and the growing 
burden of the taxes threw the peasantry more and more in 
arrears, and finally resulted in forcing them all, themselves 
and their descendants, into the immutable status of the 
colonate.* 

In 1846 two additional theories were presented, both of 
which attempted-to-trace a relationship of the colonate to 
earlier dependent conditions. Laferfiére*~considered- that 
the root of the colonate was to be found in the ancient 
status of _clientage. In early Rome the patricians and the 
equites held large sections of the ager publicus in precarious 
tenure. As cultivators of the lands the patricians made use 
of their clients, to whom they sublet small plots on a 
similarly precarious footing. But in the course of time the 
holdings of the patrician landlords gradually changed from 
state leases to complete ownership; and this change trans- 
formed their client-coloni from precarious tenants to per- 
petual coloni tied in hereditary bonds to the sotl. Thus, 
in rural districts, there developed a condition between free- 
dom and slavery similar to the intermediate class of freed- 
men in cities.° } 

The same transformation of clients to coloni was to be 





1 Cf. Cod. Theod., xii, 1, 33 of 342'A. D. and Cod. Theod., x, 12, 
2 of 368 A. D. 


2 Cod. Theod., xiv, 18, 1. 

* Zumpt, op. cit., p. 54. 

* Histoire du droit civil de Rome et du droit francais, vol. ii, pp. 439-447. 
> Ibid., pp. 439-440. 


THE ROMAN COLONATE [50 





éen in Gaul. The clients mentioned by Caesar later were 
converted into coloni, as is evidenced by the Roman and 
Frankish Codes. Salvian, in the fifth century after Christ, 
described the process by which poverty-stricken freemen in 
his day commended themselves to rich patrons and became 
coloni.* It was precisely similar, said Laferriére, to the way 
poor men had become clients and coloni during the Republic. 
And this ancient practice reached such proportions m the 
late Empire that the government, fearing that the patrons 
would become too powerful, strove to check it by repeated 
legislation.” 

A more eclectic theory was presented by Charles Giraud,* 
who attempted to combine several earlier theories into a not 
altogether homogeneous whole. ‘The colonate, he said, was 
not “a spontaneous production, an accidental or isolated 
fact,’ but the result of a long historical evolution of the 
agricultural classes of Italy and Greece.* The Greeks 
differed from the early Romans in that they despised manual 
labor and regarded agriculture as unworthy of a freeman; 
while the Romans on the other hand held agriculture as an 
occupation to be practiced with honor by a consul or a dic- 
tator. But in the course of time two influences caused the 
Greek concept to prevail over that of the ancient Romans. 
The first was the effect of a career of conquest on the 
Romans themselves. With the_growth of Roman territory 
in Italy, there developed a great concentration of wealth and 
property. The smalfproprietor almost disappeared and the 


® Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, v, 8, 43. 

® Laferriére, op. cit., pp. 441-442. 

3 Essai sur histoire du droit francais au moyen age (Paris, 1846), 
vol. i, pp. 148-183. 

* Tbid., p. 149. “A mes yeux le colonat romain n’est point une pro- 
duction spontanée, un fait accidentel ou isolé; il se rattache a l’histoire 
plus ancienne des populations agricoles de I’Italie et de la Gréce.” 


ST] EARLY THEORIES =I 


land of the wealthy lords came to be cultivated by humble 
freemen and slaves." In the second place, Rome was sub- 
jected to the direct influence of Greek customs, which took 
effect as soon as Rome™tarie in contact with the Hellenic 
civilization of South Italy and Sicily. Among the Greeks, 
in addition to the freemen and slaves, there was an inter- 
mediate class which was attached in perpetuity to the soil. 
Such an intermediate class was also to be found in the Greek 
colonies of Italy and Sicily. And it was the influence of 
the previously existing Hellenic serfdom which caused a 
similar class to develop among the Romans, as soon as the 
land commenced to be deserted and the need for more culti- 
vators to be felt.’ 

This class of peasants, half-free and half-servile, devel- 
oped in Ytaly about the beginning of the Empire, Giraud 
maintained It was recruited both from free peasantg 
ruined by pover. , —whom the 
general liberal tendencies of the Augustan Age caused to 
be partially emancipated. In the early Empire this semi- 
servilé Status was not codified into law but was simply a 
matter of custom and contract. It developed rather on the 
great latifundia than in the districts close to Rome, and for 
that reason was not specifically treated by Cato, Varro, and 
Columella in their works on agriculture.* But the mention 
of the coloni liberi by Columella ° seems to imply that colon: 
who were not liberi did exist. Likewise the colom et 
pastores with which Caesar reported that Domitius Aheno- 
barbus had manned a whole fleet ° could hardly have referred 





1 Tbid., pp. 152-153. 
2 Thid., pp. 159-160. 
$ [bid., p. 157. 

* Ibid., p. 162. 

Ue ROR: 1,:7- 

* Bel. Civ., i, 343 56. 


U, OF iLL. LIB, 


52 THE ROMAN COLONATE [52 


to freemen. For, said Giraud, both the considerable num- 
bers of the coloni and their union with the servile shepherds * 
strongly indicated their dependent condition in relation to 
Ahenobarbus. And finally the analogy’ which Tacitus drew ” 
between the German serf and the colonus showed beyond 
question that the colonus to whom he referred was not the 
free tenant of Columella and the Digest, but a peasant of 
a much more servile character.® 

From the time of Marcus Aurelius the colonate received 
numerous accretions from barbarians settled in the Empire. 
Yet when Diocletian became emperor, although he himself 
settled thousands of barbarians on the land in different parts 
of the realm, the stretches of agri deserti continued to in- 
crease with menacing regularity. In early antiquity the 
general serfdom_of the peasantry hadted-to prosperity by 
_ keeping the land in cultivation. By returning to such a 
system it was thought that the ancient prosperity might be 
restored. Hence arose the legislation of Diocletian and his 
successors which attached all the peasantry of the Empire 
to the soil in perpetuity.* “ The dominating and permanent 
thought in this regard was always to put the abandoned and 
deserted land back into cultivation. The colonate had be- 
come, by the effect of extraordinary circumstances, a ques- 
tion of the public’order and the greatest interest of the 
Empire. . . . To cultivate and repopulate the fields was the 
first necessity of the State; everything yielded to it.” ® 


1 Caes., op. cit., i, 57. “‘ Pastores indomiti, spe libertatis excitate...” 

7 Germ., 25. 

3 Giraud, op. cit., p. 165. 

4 Tbid., p. 170. 

5 Tbid., p. 171. “La pensée dominante et permanente a cet égard fut 
toujours de remettre en culture la terre abandonnée et déserte...Le 
colonat était devenu, par l’effet de circonstances extraordinaires, une ques- 
tion d’ordre public, et le plus grand intérét de l’empire... Faire cultiver, 
repeupler les compagnes était la premiére nécessité de l'état; tout s’est 
plié devant elle.” 


53 | EARLY THEORIES 53 


Prior to 1847 three types of theory had been offered as 
explanations of the origin of the colonate. The colonate 
had been related to previous servile tenures either in Italy 
or in the provinces; it had been associated with barbarian 
settlements; and it had been regarded as the outcome of a 
modified manumission of slaves. In 1847 a new theory was 
formulated simultaneously and apparently independently by 
Carl Hegel in Germany * and Wallon in France.* The two 
explanations differed considerably in detail and method of 
approach; but they both regarded the colonate as primarily 
formed of free Roman citizens, who had been bound to the 
soil by the Roman administration for fiscal reasons, in pre- 
cisely the same way that the decurion (city senator) was 
bound to his curia and the craftsman to his gild, 

According to Hegel the late Empire was characterized by 
universal_poverty in economic li _thorough-going des- 
potism in the government. In order to check the process 
of decay which was proceeding rapidly in all parts of society, 
and in order to insure the continued payment of taxes, the 
government decreed that all ll classes of society should become 
fixed and permanent. *From the decuriones, members of a 
distinguished city aristocracy, to the soldiers, city plebeians, 
and coloni, a general caste system_was organized from which 
no one could escape. The decuriones in the cities and the 
landlords in the country were held responsible for certain 
taxes and liturgies which must be rendered to the state. 
These included land and capitation taxes, specified pay- 
ments in produce, the furnishing of recruits for the army, 
and carrying services of all kinds for the court, the army, 


1 Geschichte der Stadteverfassung von Italien (Leipzig, 1847), vol. 3, 
pp. 84-88. 

"Histoire de l’esclavage dans lantiquité (Paris, 1847), vol. 111, pp. 
262-313, et passim. 


5 Op. cit., p. 86. 


4 THE ROMAN COLONATE [54 


ti 


and traveling officials. The decuriones could in no way 
avoid these payments to the state. If the taxes collected 
were less than the assessed amount, they were forced to 
make up the loss out of their own property. And since the 
ability of the decuriones to pay the taxes rested upon con- 
tinued cultivation of their lands, it was only right and fair 
that they be assured of their cultivators. Hence the law 
attaching the coloni to their estates.’ 

Wallon, whose Histoire de lesclavage dans lantiquté 
appeared in the same year, based his theory of the colonate 
on a suggestion which had been made some years before by 
Guizot. Guizot had stated that there were three possible 
explanations of the origin of the colonate. It was either (1) 
the result of conquest in which the peasantry of the con- 
quered nation was forced to till the soil as serfs of the 
victors; or (2) it was derived from an agricultural popula- 
tion originally free but which had lost its freedom through 
the encroachments of the rich and the pressure of an aristo- 
cratic administration; or finally (3) it was genetically re- 
lated to previous servile conditions, especially in Gaul. 
Guizot had selected the third alternative as the most prob- 
able origin of the colonate.* But Wallon felt that Gallic 
serfdom formed too narrow a base to be the origin of an 
institution which existed not only in Gaul but in every 
province of the Empire. “ The universality of this custom 
evidently demands a general cause which acted uniformly 
everywhere,” he said. The first alternative he likewise re- 
garded as unsatisfactory, for if the colonate had been es- 
tablished at the time Rome conquered the provinces it 
would have been mentioned as frequently in the laws of the 


! Tbid., p. 87. 

2 Cf. supra, p. 38; Wallon, of. cit., vol. iii, pp. 280-281. 

SJbid., p. 281. “ L’universalité de cette coutume réclame evidemment 
une cause générale, qui ait agi uniformément partout.” 


55] EARLY THEORIES 55 


Digest of the second and third century as it was in the 
Codes of the fourth and later centuries. But Guizot’s 
second hypothesis appeared to Wallon as the true explanation 
of the origin of the colonate. ‘‘ The colonate was derived 
not from conquest but from administration,” he maintained.* 
In the early Republic the object of Roman administration 
had been to develop a numerous and brave population. But 
under the Empire its sole anxiety was to obtain sufficient 
revenue. With the proceeds from the taxes it could support 
a standing army and maintain a comprehensive administra- 
tion. “L’impot, voila sa force.’ ? In the poverty of the 
late Empire, however, taxes were obtained with-trereasing 
difficulty and consequently a universal immobilization of 
functions became necessary. The craftsman was heredi- 
tarily bound to his trade, every citizen was bound with his 
posterity to his college or corporation, and the member of 
the city curia was held forever in his office.* And in pre- 
cisely the same manner and under the same influences the 
country peasant was attached to the soil as a serf.* 

This administrative adscription, however, was not a 
sudden transformation but merely legalized a condition 
which had long since appeared on the land. The develop- 
ment of the slave-worked latifundia during the Republic 
had ruined the small peasantry of Rome, and when, at the 
beginning of the Empire, the supply of slaves commenced 
to fall short, the large landed proprietors experienced the 
ereatest difficulty in finding sufficient labor to keep their lands 
in cultivation. Every means possible, legal or illegal, was 
utilized to obtain agricultural labor. In the time of 


‘Tbid., p. 281. “Le colonat dérive non de la conquéte mais de l’admin- 
istration.” 


* [bid., p. 268. 
* [bid., pp. 264-265. 
* [bid., p. 282. 


56 THE ROMAN COLONATE [56 


Augustus freemen were seized as slaves in an organized 
brigandage. Notwithstanding attempts to destroy this prac- 
tice, brigandage existed everywhere, and the forcible seizure 
of free men (le rapt de Vhomme libre) continued unabated.* 
In addition the poor were crushed by the tyrannical usury 
charged by the rich. The taxes which a corrupt administra- 
tion allowed the upper classes - de through bribery fell 
the more ily on the poor. Constantly™ easants 
were hatderedaen al oaneaniere and corvées of all kinds. 
The judges of the courts and even the governors of the 
provinces were sometimes the accomplices of the rich and 
sometimes the principal authors of these fraudulent im- 
positions. The civil wars of the third century increased the 
misery of the poor with their devastations and the ruin which 
followed in their wake.” The invasions of the barbarians 
forced the peasants who had lived on the border to seek 
safety within the Empire as homeless fugitives. But in- 
stead of finding a refuge, they were seized as vagabonds by 
the rich in their heartless rapacity and sett a 
as serfs.° 

The Roman administration in the provinces was that of 
a government of conquest. The proprietors were made re- 
sponsible for the taxes and allowed to take any means they 
pleased to squeeze out payments from the peasantry. The 
proprietor was in a difficult position himself, and, unless he 
was able to force the coloni in his estates to furnish the 
requisitions allotted to him, he himself was ruined and. 
joined the pauper multitude. Sometimes the exactions 
proved so severe that the coloni revolted in desperation, as 
in the case of the rebellion of the Bagaudes in Gaul during 





 Tbid., p. 283. 
* Tbid., 285-286. 
3 Tbid., pp. 2903 and 208. 


57] EARLY THEORIES 37 


the reign of Diocletian, a new type of servile war against 
the common enemy, the treasury.* 

The final legal adscription of the coloni, as it appeared 
in the Codes, took place as the result of two causes. The 
influence, of Christianity, which had already alleviated the 
harsh Gsteer OF SGvSS = [el the Cieiciicn emperors of 
the fourth century to regulate the-condition of the colonus 
in such a way as to safeguard for him the name and prin- 
cipal rights of freedom.* Otherwise the cupidity of the 
proprietors might have forced the miserable peasantry into 
actual slavery. Secondly, the legal adscription of the colo- 
nus assured the administration of a regular payment of 
taxes. If the coloni deserted their holdings, either the 
proprietor was ruined by the taxes or else the treasury 
suffered. Consequently the legal recognition of the colonate 
saved the peasantry from further encroachments on their 
liberty on the part of the proprietors, while at the same time 
it provided the administration with a permanent and reliable 
source of taxation. 

In the same year (1847), Huschke published his Ueber 
den Census und die Steuerverfassung der frithern romischen 
Kaisergeit,’ in which he made an ingenious attempt to com- 
bine the theory of barbarian settlements with the theory of 
previous servile tenures. “The regular and true source of 
origin of the colonate,’* he said, were the barbarian 
dedititui, whom the Romans had settled within the Empire. 
The clearest text indicating this was the famous constitution 


1Tbid., p. 287. “...Vennemi commun, le fisc.” 

3 Ibid., p. 313. 

3 Ibid., p. 208. 

4 Tbid., p. 301. 

° Cf., DP. 145-175. 

SJbid., p. 151. “Der regelmassige und eigentliche Entstehungsgrund 
des Colonats.” 


58 THE ROMAN COLONATE [58 


of Honorius and Theodosius II in 409 A. D. in regard to 
the Scyrae.* But, as Zumpt had jhown, this was merely 
the last of a long series of barbarian settlements of similar 
nature. The settlements of Gratian, Valentinian II, Con- 
stantius II, Constantine, and Constantius I showed that the 
barbarian colonate existed in the beginning of the fourth 
century, while the settlements of -Diocletian, Maximian, 
Probus, and Claudius II carried it back to the middle of the 
third century. The colonate did not appear conspicuously 
in the writings of the third century jurists in the Digest for 
the reason that, like emphyteusis, which was similarly 
neglected, the colonate was a matter of provincial adminis- 
tration and not of civil law.* Yet there are certain rare 
references to coloni and mquilini in the Digest which can 
only be interpreted as referring to a peasantry in substan- 
tially the same economic and legal condition as the colon 
of the Codes. The inquilint could not be bequeathed with- 
out the estates to which they were attached.” The pro- 
prietor of an estate must declare his imqwilimt and coloni in 
the census under penalty of law.* Coloni were mentioned 
as being particularly numerous on imperial estates,” where 
it was most likely the barbarian dedititiz were settled. And 
finally a law of Alexander Severus in 225 showed that the 
proprietor had as great rights over the child of a female 


colorfie_(adscripticia) as of a slave. 

1 Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4). 3. Cf. supra, pp. 34-35. 

* Huschke, op. cit., p. 158. 

*Dig.. xxx, 1, 112, pr. “Si quis inquilinos sine praediis, quibus 
adhaerent, legaverit: inutile est legatum.” 

*Dig., L, 15, 4, 8. “Si quis inquilinum vel colonum non fuerit pro- 
fessus, vinculis censualibus tenetur.’ 

RT RS CMC RE Bad Dig ORLY Goan Dull cif y 

* Huschke, op. ctt., p. 157. 

* Cod. Just. viii, 52, 1. “Si invito vel ignorante te partus ancillae 
vel adscripticiae tuae expositus sit, repetere eum non prohiberis.” 


59] EARLY THEORIES | 59 


Zumpt had traced the colonate as far back as the settle- 
ments of Marcus Aurelius in the latter part of the second 
century. But Huschke believed that the evidences of the 
colonate in the first century were equally convincing. ron- 
tinus, during the reign of Domitian (81-96 A. D.), men- 
tioned a “numerous plebeian population” which provincial 
magnates in Africa possessed on their estates.. In 69 A. D. 
the edict of Tiberius Julius Alexander called attention to 
the inferior class of dyéo10. yewpyss whom Huschke regarded 
as serf-coloni.* During the reign of Nero (54-68 A. D.) 
Tiberius ‘Plautius, the legate of Moesia, settled 100,000 
people from across the Danube as tributaru.* Columella in 
60 A. D. spoke of estates being cultivated by citizens “ held 
in the bonds of their debts ” as well as slaves.* And finally 
Augustus himself settled numerous barbarian tribes in the 
Empire. Strabo said of the Vardaei that “the Romans 
compelled them to cultivate the land,’ ° while the Alpine 
Triumpilini, who were settled in Italy, were described by 
Pliny as a “ people who are to be sold with their fields.” ° 
“That is,” said Huschke, “they became coloni in the later 
sense of the word.” ‘ 

But Huschke was not satished with tracing settlements 
of dedititi to the beginnings of the Empire. He was con- 
vinced that similar treatment of conquered peoples went 


! Frontinus, in Gromatict Veteres, ed. Lachmann, p. 53. “ Habent 
ptivati in saltibus non exiguum populum plebeium.” 
_ * Huschke, of. cit., pp. 160, 167. 

* Orelli, Inscr. lat. No. 750. “...ad praestanda tributa.” 

“De R. R., i, 3, 12. “...occupatos nexu civium et ergastulis tenent.” 

SStrabo, vii, 5, 6. ‘‘avrode . .. ‘Pwuaior . . . yvayKacav (trHv uecdyasov) 
yewpyeiv,’’ 
 * Pliny, NV. H., iii, 24. “...venalis cum agris suis populus.” 

*Op. cit., p. 162. “...d. h. Colonen im spatern Sinne des Worts 
wurden.” 


60 THE ROMAN COLONATE [60 


back to the beginning of the Republic if not to the founda- 
tion of Rome itself. In all probability, he said, this was 
the origin of clientage.* Certainly the Italian allies of 
Hannibal, the Campanians and their neighbors,” the Brut- 
tians,® the Picentians,* and the Lucanians°® were settled in 
a dependent condition with certain financial: and agrarian 
obligations. In addition Huschke held that the obaerati 
mentioned by Varro in Italy ° and by Caesar in Gaul * were 
a semi-servile class, like the next and clientes, bound to their 
patron by a permanent hereditary relationship.* Somewhat 
freer, yet still in a condition of more or less dependence, 
were the coloni whom Catiline enlisted along with his freed- 
men in his troops,? and Ahenobarbus with his slaves, freed- 
men, and shepherds.” 

In fact, Huschke concluded, conditions of serfdom were 
general all throughout the ancient world. In the Greek 
settlements in Italy the Bruttians in Lucania, the yatwvoa of 
Heracleia, and the yaewva of Sicily were the servile peasantry 
of the ruling nations. In Greece proper the Spartan Helots 
were the best known of numerous servile races cultivating 
the land, while traces of serfdom were also to be found in 
Egypt, Illyria, Asia, Syria, and Gaul. The general cause 
of all these types of serfdom was the subjection of a foreign 
race by a stronger nation. The barbarian colonate of the 


1 Ibid., p. 163. 

A eV. 

* Appian, De Bel. Hannib., 61. 

4 Strabo, v, 4, 13. 

5 Strabo, vi, 1, 2 and 3. 

Pay rg 

‘Bet, Gal., 1,42 vi, 13. 

® Huschke, op. cit., p. 167. “...ein dauerndes erbliches Verhaltniss.’ 
* Sallust, Catil., 59. 

10 Caesar, Bel. Civ., i, 343 1, 56. 


61] EARLY THEORIES 61 


Roman empire was merely a repetition of a very ancient 
fact.” | 

When Augustus organized the Roman Empire, he found 
the land of Italy and the provinces cultivated by peasants 
in all kinds and degrees of dependence. To standardize 
these heterogeneous servile relationships and to bind the 
peasants forever to the soil and thus check the desertion of 
the fields which had already increased to menacing propor- 
tions, was a work of first importance to the tax administra- 
tion. The great imperial census of Augustus, Huschke be- 
lieved, was the occasion of putting this general regulation 
into force. This law of Augustus he maintained was the 
lex a majoribus constituta mentioned in the Justinian Code.” 
It did not contain the detailed regulations regarding the 
colonate which appear in the Codes, it is true. This was the 
work of the legislators of the late Empire. But the general 
features of the colonate, such as the permanent adscription 
to the soil, were contained in the census regulations of 
Augustus; and it was in this general relationship that the 
barbarians were settled by Augustus and his successors. 

In 1850 Savigny published the third edition of the essay 
on the colonate which had inaugurated these many theories.* 
To his original treatises he added a supplement written in 
1849 in which he discussed the development in the theories 
of the colonate which had taken place since the last edition 
of his essay. The theories of Giraud and Puchta he re- 
garded as incompatible with the principles of Roman law, 
while the attempt of Huschke to relate the colonate both to 
barbarian settlements and previous servile conditions he felt 
was “an uncritical intermixture of essentially different re- 
lations.”* But the cautious old scholar who had looked 


1 Huschke, of. cit., p. 168. 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 51,1. Cf. Huschke, of. cit., p. 160. 

*Vermischte Schriften, ii, 1-66. 

‘Thid., p. 56. “...so finde ich darin eine unkritische Vermischung 
_ wesentlich verschiedenartige Verhaltnisse.” 


62 THE ROMAN COLONATE [62 


askance at so many previous oxpenatione of the colonate in 
the earlier editions of his treatise, finally declared himself 
unreservedly in favor of the theory of barbarian settlements 
as developed by Zumpt. “It is,” he said, “an explanation 
of the colonate, which not only is very simple and natural 
in itself, but also finds its confirmation in the fact that in a 
case of the fifth century the conquered Scyrae were expressly 
subjected to the colonate by an imperial law.” * 


1 Jbid., p. 55. “Es liegt darin eine Herleitung des Colonats, die nicht 
nur an sich hochst einfach und nattirlich ist, sondern auch darin ihre 
Bestitigung findet, dass in einem Fall des fiinften Jahrhunderts die be- 
siegten Scyren durch ein Kaisergesetz ausdriicklich dem Colonat unter- 
worfen wurden.” 


CHAPTER III 
ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 


AN analysis of the theories of the colonate advanced by 
writers mentioned in the previous chapter shows that there 
were five different types of explanation of the origin of the 
colonate. The colonate was derived from (1) voluntary 
enlistment of freemen oppressed by taxes and debts, (2) 
limited manumission of slaves which bound the freedman 
to the soil, (3) pre-Roman servile tenures in the provinces 
and pre-imperial dependent relationships in Italy, (4) bar- 
barian captives settled in the Empire as serfs instead of 
slaves, and (5) administrative pressure largely actuated by 
fiscal considerations. Some writers held that one of these 
explanations was sufficient to bring about the adscription of 
the colonus to the soil; while others combined two or more 
of them. Our next task, then, is to examine the texts upon 
which these theories were based and to judge the adequacy 
of each as an acceptable theory. 


The theory that the colonate was formed by a voluntary 
entrance into a ea tr weer aes by 
any write {plete explanation of the colonate. It 
was mentioned by Savigny in the first edition of his essay 
as a possible explanation,’ later by Laferriére in connection 
with his client theory ° and finally by Giraud.* The theory 
depends almost altogether on a passage in Salvian’s De 


1 Savigny, Abhand. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, 1822, p. 23. 
? Laferricre, Histoire du dr. civ. de Rome, ii, p. 441. 


® Giraud, Histoire du dr. francais, p. 157. 
63] 63 


64 THE ROMAN COLONATE [64 


Gubernatione Dei. Salvian was describing the severe bur- 
dens of taxation which weighed heavily upon the small 
peasant proprietor. To evade the taxes the peasants fre- 
quently entered into the patronage of the rich. But the 
advantage gained was only a-temporary one, for the patrons 
were often more grasping than the government and soon 
not only held the peasant-clients themselves wholly in their 
power but their children as well. “ Wherefore,’ said 
Salvian, “some of those of whom we speak who are more 
prudent, or whom necessity has made prudent, seek the es- 
tates of the powerful and become coloni of the rich.” * 

Salvian wrote in about 495 A. D., more than a century 
and a half after the first laws in the Codes which regulated 
the condition of the coloni. It is easy to see how the small 
peasant proprietor who had become a client of an avaricious 
patron might better his condition by abandoning his land 
altogether and_ becoming a colonus of a great lord. For in 
the former condition he was at the mercy of his patron, 
while in the latter, although a serf, he was protected by the 
law ia@this rights.andiette amount of his obligations. The 
numerous laws in the Codes which regulated the entrance 
of freemen into the colonate show that the colonate received 
frequent accessions from the free peasantry who no longer 
found their condition tolerable.? The passage from Salvian 
quoted above is valuable in showing one of the causes which 
brought about an increase in the number of the coloni after 
the colonate had once been established; but it offers no clue 
which would help to explain how or why the colonate was 
originally organized. 

Laferriére regarded the colonate as an outgrowth of the 


1Salvian, De Gubernat. Dei, v, 8, 43. “Itaque, nonnulli eorum de 
quibus loquimur, qui aut consultiores sunt, aut quos consultos necessitas 
fecit...fundos majorum expetunt, et coloni divitum fiunt.” 


* Cy. Coa, Just., Xi, 48, 19; 223722, 1: 


65] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 65 


old system of clientage, and the tendency of peasants to 
enter under the patronage of influential men, as reported by 
Salvian, he felt was a characteristic of all periods of Roman 
history. Aside from the fact that there are no records of 
clientage in the Empire earlier than the fifth century, it must 
be remembered that the peasant who was the client of a 
great patron was entirely different from a colonus. The 
client-peasant held the land which he had commended to his 
patron in precarious tenure, that is, wholly at the pleasure 
of his lord, while the colonus held his land in perpetuity and 
could not be removed from it in any way by the proprietor. 
In fact patronage was a movement away from the colonate 


and the welcome which powerful patrons gave to runaway 


coloni threatened in m S to destroy the adscrip- 
tion of fee iontia tortie acl ain the Codes tied SO 
carefully to maintain." The passage in Salvian, which 
Laferriere cited, plainly shows the difference between the 
peasant-clients and the coloni. Peasant proprietors despair- 
ing of meeting their taxes first commended themselves as 
clients to great lords. Then when they found that they 
were in an even worse condition than they had been before 
they gave up their lands altogether and became serf-tenants 
or coloni on the estates of rich landlords. But patronage 
itself had nothing to do with the formation of the colonate. 

The second theory, that the colonate can be derived from 
a conditional manumission of slaves, had been first suggested 
by Savigny and later advocated by Puchta. Slave culture 
was proving unprofitable, it was said, so landowners found 
it advantageous to free their slaves on the condition that the 
freedmen and their descendants should remain as permanent 
serf-tenants on their Jands. (Since private arrangements 
which slave-owners might make with their slaves would have 
no effect on their legal status, Puchta supposed that new 


' Cf., De Zulueta, De Patrociniits Vicorum (Oxford, 1909), pp. 26, 50. 


6 THE ROMAN COLONATE [66 


legislation in regard to emancipation of slaves was passed 
between the first and fourth centuries which permitted the 
freeing of slaves on the condition that the treedman be 
attached to the soil. 

The theory of Puchta, however, remains a mere con- 
jecture in the absence of any text relating to the supposed 
legislation. This is especially remarkable in the light of 
the full details which are given in the Justitutes of Gaius 
and Justinian in regard to revisions of the manumission 
laws during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.” As 
Zumpt * and Savigny * have said, if legislation of such im- 
portance as this had been passed, it could not possibly have 
escaped the notice of the compilers of Justinian’s Corpus 
Juris Civilts. So this theory died an early death. 

The theories of voluntary enlistment of freemen and 
limited manumission of slaves never received very serious 
consideration, but the third theory, that the colonate was 
derived from earlier servile conditions, was more widely 
accepted than any other in the period before 1850. Cujacius 
regarded the coloni as the lineal heirs of the early operarit 
in Italy, while Schultz and Laferriére held that the colonate 
Was an outgrowth of clientage. Rudorff related the coloni 
to the Egyptian yewpyés, Guizot to the Gallic client, while 
Dureau de la Malle and Giraud found in early Greek serf- 
dom the prototype of the colonate. : 

Before the theory of early servile tenures can be regarded 
as a valid explanation of the origin of the colonate it is 
necessary to prove three things. First, it must be shown 
that the earlier servile condition was essentially similar to 
the condition of the colonate; second, that there was a 


Gaius, Institutes, i, 12-15; ili, 56-62, 70-76. Justinian, Institutes, 
acres 

* Rhein. Mus., iii (1845), p. 9. 

*Vermischte Schriften, ii, pp. 60-61. 


67] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 67 


continuous development from the earlier serfdom to the 
colonate as it was legalized in the Codes; and, in the third 
place, that the previous servile relationships were widely 
enough extended throughout the Empire to serve as the 
basis of the colonate. But in most of the examples cited 
by writers advocating this hypothesis there was little which 
resembled the condition of the later colonate. In Italy, the 
operarius mentioned by Cujacius was a humble day-laborer,* 
but no reference has ever been discovered which even re- 
motely indicates that he might have been a serf. The 
clients, mentioned by Schultz and Laferriére, it is true were 
persons in a condition of distinct dependence to their patrons ; 
and no doubt they usually were used by their patrons as 
agricultural tenants on their estates. But the clients held 
the land wholly at the pleasure of their patrons and could 
be withdrawn from the land any time their patrons wished,* 
which was a condition diametrically opposed to that of the 
coloni. The clients were in a condition of personal depen- 
dence towards their patrons and were in no sense attached 
to. the soil like the coloni. The assumption of Laferriere 
that when the patricians’ tenure of the ager publicus changed 
from a precarious lease to permanent ownership, the clients 
at the same time changed from precarious to permanent 
tenants, is wholly without the support of any text. Like 
the limited manumission of slaves, which Puchta imagined, 
a change of such importance could not have failed to have 
left some record in contemporaneous literature or in the body 
of the law. 

Rudorff believed that the colonate could be traced to 
previous servile conditions like that of the Sypéoror yewpyoi 
of Egypt. Yet the references which he cited merely show 


1 Cf., Cato, De Agric., x, 1; Cicero, Tuscul, Disput., v, 36, 104. 
2Cf. Dig., xliii, 26, 1, pr. “ Praecarium est, quod precibus petenta 
utendum conceditur tandiu, quandiu is qui concessit patitur.” 


68 THE ROMAN COLONATE [68 


that the yewpyot were state tenants paying a rent in kind 
(éxfdpov). The edict of Tiberius Julius Alexander in 68 
A. D., in contrasting their position to that of the Alexandrian 
landlords does no more than imply that the yewpyol, were a 
distinctly inferior class;* and the references to Diodorus 
and Herodotus are no more definite. All we learn from 
Diodorus is that the yewpyot were one of the humbler classes 
of Egyptian society below the priests, nobles and soldiers, 
but above tradesmen and handicraftsmen; ? while Herodotus 
is even less explicit. Hence we may conclude with 
Savigny * that on such inadequate evidence the theory of 
Rudorff can only be regarded as a mere conjecture. 

Guizot maintained that the colonate was an outgrowth of 
the servile conditions in Gaul and other Celtic countries; and 
it is true that Caesar’s Commentaries offer superior evidence 
of dependent relationships than the references cited by 
Rudorff. Guizot quoted no texts, but the passages in 
Caesar’s De Bello Gallico in regard to Gallic clientage are 
well known.* There were two types of dependence in Gaul, 
that of the soldier who was bound never to desert his patron 
no matter how desperate his plight * and who might even be 
burnt on his lord’s funeral pyre,’ and that of the poor peas- 
ant burdened by taxes and debts and by the oppression of 
the rich who commended himself to a powerful protector.” 


1Cf. supra, p. 36. 

= Ur t.s Diodoriis aed. aera 

> Cf. Herodot., ii, 164. 

*Vermischte Schriften, ii, p. 48. 

5 Cf. Garsonnet, Locations perpétuelles (Paris, 1879), pp. 30-32; Fustel 
de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques (Paris, 1888-1892), i, 
pp. 11-18. 

® Caesar, Bel. Gal., vii, 40. 

* Tbid., vi, 19. 

8 [bid., vi, 11; 13. Cf. Garsonnet, op. cit., p. 33; Fustel de Coulanges, 
op. cit., p. 16. 


69 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 09 


The former type of retainer, however, was a soldier, who 
was a member of the military body-guard of his chieftain; 
he was not a peasant at all, so there could have been no 
relationship between him and the later serf-colonus. What- 
ever connection which might be shown to have existed be- 
tween dependent conditions in Gaul and the colonate must 
have been with the Gallic peasant-client. Yet unfortunately 
the description of Caesar is too vague to give us much 
assistance. ‘‘ The plebeians,” said Caesar, “‘ are considered 
almost like slaves, since they have no power themselves and 


are represented in no council. ery many, when they are 


crushed by debt or taxes or by oppression of the powerful, 
give themselves up in servitude to the nobles. These latter 
have all the rights in regard to them which a master has 
over his slaves.” * In another chapter Caesar described the 
ancient institution of patronage “as designed so that no 
plebeian shall be in need of aid against a more powerful 
person; for each (patron) takes care to prevent his re- 
tainers from being oppressed or molested.” ” 

The exact nature of the relations of the peasant-clients 
to their patrons must remain a matter of conjecture, for 
outside of some passages referring to debtors and clients 
following chieftains like Orgetorix,? Dumnorix,* and Ver- 
cingetorix,”® the texts quoted above are our sole sources of 


1:Caesar, Bel. Gal., vi, 13.. “ Plebs paene servorum habetur loco, quae 
nihil audet per se, nulli adhibetur consilio. Plerique, cum aut aere alieno 
aut magnitudine tributorum aut iniuria potentiorum premunter, sese in 
servitutem dicant nobilibus; in hos eadem omnia sunt iura, quae dominis 
in servos.” 

2 [bid., vi, 11. “Idque eius rei causa antiquitus institutum videtur, ne 
quis ex plebe contra potentiorem auxilii egeret; suos enim quisque op- 
primi et circumveniri non patitur.” 

3 Tbid., i, 4. 

4 Tbid., i, 18. 

3 Tbid., vii, 4. 


70 THE ROMAN COLONATE [70 


information. We can well imagine that the peasant-clients 
owed rents and services to their lord like the German slave- 
tenants described by Tacitus." But to suppose that they 
were attached to the soil in a way in which they could not 
be removed at the pleasure of their patrons seems altogether 
unlikely. It must be remembered that, like the Roman client, 
the Gallic retainer was in a position of personal dependence 
towards his patron and not of predial dependence in rela- 
tion to a lord’s estate,” and we must not lose sight of the 
fact that the Gallic tribes before the Roman conquest were 
hardly in a condition in which permanent relationships in 
_ property in land could develop, such as adscription to the 
soil in perpetuity. Therefore to regard the coloni as the 
lineal descendants of the Gallic peasant-clients is an inference 
absolutely unwarranted by the facts at our disposal. 

Dureau de la Malle and Giraud believed that the roots of 
the colonate could be found in various forms of early Greek 
serfdom. The sacred slaves attached to certain Greek 
temples, mentioned by Dureau de la Malle, were too utterly 
dissimilar to the coloni to have influenced the origin of the 
colonate in any way; but the several types of predial serfdom 
cited by Dureau de la Malle and Giraud at first glance seem 
to bear considerable resemblance to the colonate. When 
the Hellenes conquered Greece, in regions where the native 
inhabitants were not driven out or extirpated they appear to 
have been subjected to some form of serfdom. Traces of 
servile and semi-servile relationships have been found in 
Thessaly, Laconia, Argos, Crete, Macedon, Corinth, Attica 
and Boeotia, as well as in many parts of Magna Graecia.* 
But unfortunately most of the references to these servile 


1 Germ., 25. 
* Cf. Terrat, Du Colonat en Droit Romain, pp. 92-93. 


* Cf. Garsonnet, Locations Perpétuelles, pp. 23-27; Paul Guiraud, art. 
“ Colonat,” in La Grande Encyclopedie, vol. xi, p. 1054. 


71 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES oa 


~ tenures are brief and vague, and it is only in regard to the 
Penestes of Thessaly and the Helots of Laconia that any- 
thing like a definite description is to be obtained. The 
principal authority describing the Penestes is Athenaeus. 
“The Thessalians,’”’ he reported, “call those Penestes who 
were not born slaves but who have been taken prisoners ot 
war. ... They gave themselves up to the Thessalians by 
agreement to be their slaves on condition that they should 
not take them out of the country nor put them to death, but 
that they should cultivate the country for them and pay 
them a yearly revenue for it.”’* Dionysius said that they 
were subjected to servile chastisements * and Demosthenes re- 
ferred to a Thessalian noble being followed in battle by 
two hundred of his Penestes,*? which apparently indicates 
that, unlike slaves, they were capable of bearing arms. 
The Helots were frequently mentioned in Greek literature 
but most of the details in regard to their status are given by 
Strabo and Athenaeus. In describing the conquest of 
Laconia by the Spartans, Strabo said that the native in- 
habitants submitted and were required to pay tribute to 
Sparta. “But the Heleii, who occupied Helos, revolted 
and were made prisoners in the course of the war. They 
were adjudged to be slaves with the conditions that the 
owner should not be allowed to give them their liberty nor 
sell them beyond the boundaries of the country. This was 
called the war of the Helots (1090 B. C.). The system 
of Helot slavery . . . continued from that time to the es- 
tablishment of the dominion of the Romans. They were a 
kind of public slaves to whom the Lacedaemonians assigned 
habitations and required of them peculiar services.” * ‘Ath- 


' Athenaeus, vi, 85. Trans. by Yonge. 

* Dionys., Antig., ii, 9. 

* Demosthenes, Hepi Zvvraséiwc, 23. 

* Strabo, viii, 5, 4. Trans. by Falconer. 


72 THE ROMAN COLONATE [72 


enaeus said of the Helots, “ They (the Spartans) impose 
every kind of insulting employment on the Helots such as 
brings with it the most extreme dishonor. . . . Every year 
they scourge them without any offence, in order to prevent 
their ever thinking of emancipating themselves from slavery. 
And besides all this, if any of them ever appear too hand- 
some, they impose death as a penalty, and their masters are 
also fined for not checking them in their growth and fine 
appearances. And they give them each a certain piece of 
land, and fix a portion which they shall invariably bring 
them from it.” * Pausanius* and Plutarch * likewise refer 
to the fixed rent which the Helots paid. They were state 
slaves* and while they could not be emancipated by the 
proprietor to whom 'they had been assigned, they apparently 
could be freed by the State, at least in times of stress. 
Plutarch, in his life of Kleomenes, told how Kleomenes, in 
attempting to obtain 500 talents, allowed the Helots to pur- 
chase their freedom at five minae apiece.” | 
Thus it is seen that the Penestes and Helots resembled 
the coloni in that they cultivated land in return for the pay- 
ment of fixed rents and services and in their liability to 
military service; but in other respects they differed from 
them considerably. The Penestes and Helots were descen- 
dants of conquered tribes and always were referred to as 
slaves (800A). They were regarded as slaves of the state 
and consequently could not be emancipated by their tempo- 
rary masters, but might be freed by the state. The coloni 
on the other hand were free in their personal status and 


? Athenaeus, xiv, 74. Trans. by Yonge. Cf. ibid., vi, 87; 102. 
ne & Aah. Ae 

3 Instituta Laconica, 32. 

* Pausanius, iii, 20, 6. 

° Plutarch, Kleomenes, 23. 


7o'| ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 73 


were called “ liberi” or “ ingenut” in the Codes. They had 
to submit to servile chastisements in case they attempted to 
desert their holdings, but otherwise they could sue their 
landlords in court for any personal indignities. But in the 
case of the subject classes of Thessaly and Sparta a sys- 
tematic policy of terrorization was practiced.t The primary 
object of these institutions apparently was to keep the 
numerically superior servile race in subjection to their con- 
querers rather than to ensure the constant cultivation of the 
soil, the ratson d’étre of the colonate. The Penestes and the 
Helots could not be sold out of the country, but there is no 
record that they were permanently attached to any estate 
and had hereditary rights in a plot of land, the two essential 
characteristics of the coloni. 

Our information concerning the other types of Greek 
serfdom is so vague that we can come to no definite 
conclusions about them. Probably they resembled the Pen- 
estes and Helots in general.” But even if they were con- 
siderably more like the coloni than the Penestes and Helots 
were, it is difficult to see what possible connection there could 
have been between these various types of Greek serfdom and 
the Roman colonate. In the first place the causes of their 
origin were different. The origin of Greek serfdom was the 
conquest of native tribes. Whatever the origin of the 
Roman colonate may have been, it certainly did not arise 
in this way. It had never been the Roman policy even in 
the earliest historical times to subject a conquered people to 
serfdom; and the legislation in regard to the colonate came 
centuries after the Roman conquests had been completed. 
In the second place, there was an interval of many centuries 
between the end of Greek serfdom and the first authentic 


1 Cf. Thucydides, iv, 80, which describes the assassination in cold blood 
of two thousand of the bravest of the Helots. 


2 Cf. Athenaeus, vi, 84 and 86. 


7A THE ROMAN COLONATE [74 


records of the beginning of the colonate. Most of the ac- 
counts of Greek serfdom refer to early times. Only in 
regard to the Helots do the records show that serfdom lasted 
until the Roman conquest.* It was not until five centuries 
later that the legislation establishing the colonate appeared. 
During the intervening period there is not the slightest evi- 
dence that serfdom of any kind existed in Greece.* That 
the colonate in Greece should have finally developed from the 
influence of serfdom in early antiquity when the causes 
which had brought about the earlier servile tenures had 
ceased to operate and when the servile tenures themselves 
had been obsolete for centuries, is a conjecture utterly devoid 
of justification. As well might one relate modern Mexican 
peonage to conditions under Montezuma. 

The whole general theory of earlier servile conditions, 
as presented by writers from Cujacius to Giraud, is abso- 
lutely untenable as an explanation of the origin of the 
colonate. In no case was an earlier type of serfdom offered 
as a prototype of the colonate that resembled the latter in 
its essential characteristics. In no case was a continuous 
development of serfdom from an ancient status of depen- 
dence to the Roman colonate proved even in regard to a 
single country. And finally, no writer was able to show that 
servile conditions were general throughout the world, or 
that the types which did exist were similar enough to each 
other to form the basis of an institution which existed in 
every province of the Empire. The colonate entered too 
vitally into the economic and social organization of the late 
Empire to be merely the survival of an empty form. 

The next theory of the colonate to be considered is the 
theory of barbarian settlements. Suggested first by Goth- ° 


ofredus and connected with the Constitutio de Scyris by 


' Strabo, loc. cit.; cf. Xenophon, Hell., i, 2, 18; vi, 5, 28; vii, 2, 2. 
2 Cf. Seeck in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real Encyclopddie, vol. iv, p. 493. 


75] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 75 


Wenck, it was elaborated in detail by Zumpt in 1845 in an 
essay which was beyond all question the leading explanation 
of the origin of the colonate in the period before 1850.” 
Even Savigny, who for a quarter of a century had retained 
an attitude of scepticism in regard to previous attempts to 
explain the origin of the colonate, declared himself com- 
pletely convinced by Zumpt’s arguments. Huschke in 1847 
added new references which supported Zumpt’s theory and 
showed that the practice of settling barbarian dedititi on 
the land was of much earlier origin than Zumpt had sup- 
posed. But Huschke injured his case by attempting to 
correlate barbarian settlements with earlier relations of 
dependence in Italy and the provinces, which was, as Savigny 
had said, an intermixture of essentially different conditions. 
Likewise Huschke’s assumption that the census of Augustus 
unified the heterogeneous mass of servile and semi-servile 
conditions in the Empire and thus created the colonate is 
a stipposition without the slightest documentary foundation. 
Just as in the case of the legislation supposed by Puchta, 
a law of as fundamental importance as that which Huschke 
imagined could not have escaped all mention from contem- 
porary literature or the writings of the Roman jurists. 
However, notwithstanding these errors in his treatment, 
Huschke’s inclusion of references to barbarian settlements 
earlier than those given by Zumpt was a contribution of no 
tittle importance in the formation of a complete statement 
of the theory of barbarian settlements.” 

The principal source upon which the theory of barbarian 


1 Savigny’s essay had almost exclusively concerned itself with the legal 
status of the coloni as set forth in the Codes. 


It is interesting to note in a recent work of the Italian historian 
Ferrero that Huschke’s theory of the relation of barbarian settlements 
to the colonate is definitely accepted. Short History of Rome (trans. by 
Chrystal, New York, 1919), vol. ii, p. 318 and note 1. 


76 THE ROMAN COLONATE [76 


settlements rests is the edict of Honorius and Theodosius 
of 409 A. D. regulating the settlement of the conquered 
Scyrae on Roman soil." The edict stated specifically that 
the Scyrae were settled as coloni.* The usual penalties in 
regard to the flight of coloni were applied to them and it 
was expressly provided that none of them were to be en- 
slaved.* Finally, like the regular coloni, they were subject 
to military service, although in this particular case the fur- 
nishing of recruits was remitted for twenty years.* 

This edict was published seventy-seven years after the 
date of the first extant constitution in the Codes regulating 
the condition of the serf-coloni.” Consequently its value in 
determining the origin of the colonate rests on the inference 
that barbarian settlements in earlier times were of similar 
nature. In this respect it corresponds to the excerpt from 
Salvian of 495 A. D. quoted above, which described the 
voluntary entrance into the colonate of small peasant pro- 
prietors who had been ruined by taxes and debts. Both of 
these texts in themselves merely show that the ranks of the 
serf-coloni were augmented in later years on the one side 
by conquered barbarians and on the other by free peasants 
in financial difficulties. But while the passage in Salvian is 
unique and can be'related to no earlier references describing 
a similar voluntary entrance into an infertor status, the con- 
stitution of Honorius and Theodosius II is the last of a long 
list of texts which refer to the settlement of the barbarian 
dedititii on Roman soil, most of which took place before 
the colonate was legally established in the Empire. If it 
could be shown, then, that the Comstitutio de Scyris was 


1 Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4), 3. Cf. supra, pp. 34-35. 

2“ Non alio iure quam colonatus apud se futuros.” 

> “Ac nulli liceat...eos...in servitutem trahere.” 

*“ Juniorum quoque intra... viginti annos praebitione cessante.” 
5 Cod. Theod., v, 17 (9), 1 (332 A. D.). 


77 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 77 


typical of the previous settlements of barbarians, a strong 
case would be presented in favor of the theory that the bar- 
barian dedititii served as the prototype of the coloni of the 
Codes. 

In addition to the edict of Honorius and Theodosius II, 
Zumpt and Huschke offered forty-four references to forced 
settlements of barbarians in the Empire. But unfortunately 
none of these citations show definitely whether the condition 
of the barbarians was like that of the Scyrae or not. The 
later settlements seem to bear the closest resemblance to that 
of the Scyrae, while the farther back the barbarian settle- 
ments are traced the less conclusive the evidence appears. 
In the period between the establishment of the Scyrae in the 
Empire and the constitution of Constantine in 332 A. D., 
barbarian settlements were reported to have been made by 
Gratian, Valentinian [, Julian, Constantius II, and Con- 
stantine. Ammianus related that Gratian in 377, after he 
had conquered the Taefali, “ distributed all the living around 
Mutina, Regium and Parma, Italian towns, to cultivate the 
fields.’ * In 370, during the reign of Valentinian I, “ Theo- 
dosius, at that time commander of the cavalry, attacked the 
Alamanni, killed many, and took some prisoners, whom at 
the emperor’s command he sent to Italy, where some fertile 
districts around the Po were assigned to them, which they 
still inhabit as tributarii.’? Julian likewise made tributari 
paying a vectigal® out of the barbarian captives, while the 
Limigantes offered to surrender to Constantius II, saying 


1 Ammian., xxxi, 9, 4, “ Vivos (Taefalorum) omnes circa Mutinam, 
Regiumque et Parmam, Italica oppida, rura culturos exterminavit.” 

* Ammian., xxviii, 5, 15. “Alamannos adgressus Theodosius (ea tem- 
pestate magister equitum) pluribus caesis, quoscumque cepit ad Italiam 
iussu principis misit, ubi fertilibus pagis acceptis, iam tributarii circum- 
colunt Padum.” 


“c 


3 Ammian., xx, 4,1. “...a barbaris...quos tributarios ipse (Julianus) 


fecit et vectigales.” 


78 _ THE ROMAN COLONATE [78 


that “they were ready to take up distant lands within the 
Roman Empire and to submit to the duties and name of 
tributari.”* Finally Eusebius related in his Life of Con- 
stantine that in 344 A. D., after the emperor had subdued 
the Sarmatians, “ those who were capable of serving, Con- 
stantine incorporated in his own troops; to the rest he 
allotted lands to cultivate for their own support.” ” 

Three things are noteworthy in the passages quoted above: 
the barbarians were used for cultivating lands, they were 
enrolled as soldiers in the legions, and they were in three 
cases spoken of as tributarit. Both the coloni in general 
and the conquered Scyrae in particular were used to cultivate 
the land and were subject to military service, while tributarti 
was one of the common designations of the coloni in the 
Codes.* However, nothing precludes the possibility that the 
barbarians were settled under imperial supervision in special 
districts where they cultivated the land, furnished recruits 
for the army, and paid tribute. Tvributarii sometimes was 
used synonymously with coloni, it is true, but also it was the 
designation applied to all provincials paying the tributiwn 
solum. Specifically it referred to taxable persons on im- 
perial estates who paid the vectigal directly to the emperor 
as opposed to the stipendiarii who paid the tax to the 
aerarium of the people.* So the description of these settle- 
ments of Constantine and his successors by no means con- 


» Ammian., xix, 11, 6. ‘‘ Limigantes...parati intro spatia orbis Romani 
terras suscipere longe discretas ut... tributayiorum onera subirent et 
nomen.” 

?Eusebius, Life of Constantine, iv, 6 (trans. by McGiffert). Cf. 
Excerpt Constant., 32. “ Sed servi Sarmatarum adversum omnes dominos 
rebellarunt; quos pulsos Constantinus libenter accepit et amplius trecenta 
millia hominum mistae aetatis et sexus per Thraciam, Scythiam, Mace- 
doniam, Italiamque divisit.” 

Cf: Cod: Theod,, x; 12,:2, 23 Cod. Sask, xi; AG, te 

4 Gaius, Inst., 11, 21. Cf. Justinian, Just., ii, 1, 40. 


79 ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 79 


clusively shows that the barbarians other than the Scyrae 
became coloni. And as these settlements were all made after 
332 A. D., when the legal colonate was known to have been 
in existence, they can give little help in determining the 
origin of that institution except by way of analogy. The 
proof of this must rest on the evidence of barbarian settle- 
ments prior to Constantine. 

Zumpt traced the policy of establishing barbarian culti- 
vators within the Empire back to Marcus Aurelius. Settle- 
ments are recorded under the reigns of Constantius I, (293- 
306 A. D.), Diocletian and Maximian (284-305 A. D.), 
Probus (276-282 A. D.), Aurelian (270-275 A. D.), 
Claudius II (268-270 A. D.), and Marcus Aurelius (161- 
180 A. D.). The objects of these settlements, as of the 
settlements after Constantine, was to cultivate the waste 
lands and to furnish recruits." The fullest description of 
the settlement of barbarians, and the one upon which Zumpt 
and Huschke place the most emphasis, is contained in the 
Panegyric to Constantius of Eumenius. 


The hiding places of the forests are not able to protect the 
barbarians from being forced to surrender to thy power and 
from going with their wives and children to places formerly 
deserted, so that the very places which perhaps they them- 
selves ravaged in their pillaging expeditions they now are forced 
to put under cultivation by servile labor (serviendo).* 


In the next chapter he continues : 


Now we see crowds of captive barbarians sitting in all the 


1Eumenius, Paneg. Constantino, 6 (concerning Constantius), ‘ Franciae 
nationes...ut, in desertis Galliae regionibus collocatae, et pacem Romani 
imperii cultu iuvarent et arma dilectu.’ 


7 Eumenius, Paneg. Constantio,&. “Nec... perfugia silvarum barbaros 
tegere potuerunt, quominus ditioni tuae omnes sese dedere cogerentur 
et cum conjugiis ac liberis ad loca olim deserta transirent ut, quae 
fortasse ipsi depraedando vastaverant, culta redderent serviendo.” 


Ro THE ROMAN COLONATE [80 


porticoes of the cities . . . and all these have been assigned to 
thy provincials for their service (ad obsequium) until they are 
applied to their destined work of cultivating uninhabited places. 
The Chamavus and the Frisian, therefore, now plows for me and 
the former wanderer and pillager now gets dirty from his work 
and exercise . . . the barbarian cultivator lowers the price of 
grain. Nay even he is summoned to military service, he hastens 
forth and congratulates himself that he can serve as a soldier.* 


Later in the panegyric Eumenius says: 


So just as by thy order, Emperor Diocletian, Asia filled the de- 
serted districts of Thrace with its inhabitants transplanted (in 
those regions), just as by thy will, Emperor Maxim n, the 
Frank, restored to the realm and received back under our laws, 
cultivated the waste lands of the Nervii and Treveri; so now 
through thy victories, unconquerable Emperor Constantius, all 
the uninhabited land of the Ambiani, Bellovaci, Tricassini, and 
Lingonici is now at peace under the barbarian cultivator.’ 


The barbarian transplanted in the realm could be used as 
a soldier; therefore he was not a slave. He was forced to 
occupy lands assigned to him by the government, usually 
lands already deserted and lying waste, not those which he 
would be likely to choose for himself as a free settler. He 


1 Eumenius, of. cit., 9. “Nunc vidimus...totis porticibus civitatum 
sedere captiva agmina barbarorum...atque hos omnes provincialibus | 
vestris ad obsequium distributos, donec ad destinatos sibi cultus solitu- 
dinum ducerentur. Arat ergo nunc mihi Chamavus et Frisius, et ille 
vagus ille depraedator exercitio squalidus operatus...et cultor barbarus 
laxat annonam. Quin etiam ad dilectum vocetur, accurrit...et servire 
se militiae nomine gratulatur.” 


7 Eumenius, op. cit., 21. “Ita sicuti pridem tuo, Diocletiane Auguste, 
jussu implevit deserta Thraciae translatis incolis Asia, sicut postea tuo, 
Maximiane Auguste, nutu Nerviorum et Treviorum arva jacentia velut 
postliminio vestitutus et receptus in leges Francus excoluit; ita nunc per 
victorias tuas, Constanti Caesar invicte, quidquid infrequens Ambiano 
et Bellocavo et Tricassino solo Lingonicoque restabat, barbaro cultore 
requiescit.” 


81] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES SI 


was compelled to put these lands under cultivation “ by servile 
labor”’ (serviendo). If there were no waste lands to be re- 
claimed at the time of the distribution of the dedititi, then 
the barbarian was assigned to provincial proprietors “ for 
their service” (ad obsequium) until recalled by the govern- 
ment to the work of reclamation. This description does not 
seem to fit a free man any more than the eligibility of the 
barbarian for military service fitted a slave; wherefore Zumpt 
concluded that the barbarians were settled in the intermediate 
status of the colonate.* 

However, this description does not seem any more ap- 
plicable to serf=co easant proprietors. The 


coloni were So aire aia eatin land 
from which they eotild not be moved. There is not the 
slightest hint in Se Cal eet 
planted barbarians were bound to the soil in this way. On 
the contrary they were apparently moved about at the pleas- 
ure of the government. When not needed in any reclama- 
tion project that the sovcenmehe WES CHTeTae, ther were 
temporarily assigned to proprietors in need of agricultural 
labor, only to be recalled later when the government desired 
their services. That they were in a condition of dependence 
somewhere between slavery and freedom we can readily 
agree; that it would have been very easy to transform per- 
sons in this intermediate status into serf-coloni, provided 
that the economic and social conditions demanded such a 
transformation, can also be accepted. But that the status 
itself of the transplanted barbarian was the prototype of the 
colonate or that it had any influence whatever on the 
economic and legal condition of the coloni is a hypothesis 
which certainly cannot be supported by the evidence from 


Eumenius. 
There are numerous texts describing barbarian settle- 






1Zumpt, op. cti., p. 24. 


82 THE ROMAN COLONATE [82 


— 


ments before Constantius, but in none is the account so 
clear as in the passages of Eumenius quoted above. Dio- 
cletian and Maximian transplanted thousands of Carpi, 
Bastarnae, and Sarmatians within the Empire.* “ Ger- 
mans, Bastarnae, Gepidi, Gautunni, Burgundians, Vandals, 
and Franks were settled by the Emperor Probus.” “ Ger- 


many has been subdued throughout its whole extent,” said _ 


Vopiscus, ‘ All the barbarians plow and sow for you and 
fight for you against interior tribes.” ° ‘‘ The Bastarnae, 
a Scythian tribe” related Zosimus, “‘ which he (Probus) 
himself conquered, he admitted into Thrace, settling them 
on assigned fields. There they continued to live in accord- 
ance with the laws of the Romans. Likewise after the 
Franks had submitted to the emperor and obtained homes 
from him, a part of them revolted, procured a fleet of ships 
and harrassed all Greece. They even reached Sicily, broke 
into Syracuse and committed many murders there. At 
length they sailed to Africa, but were driven away from 
there by troops from Carthage. Nevertheless they were 
able to reach their homes without accident.” * The Vandals, 
Gepidi, and Gautunni likewise wandered away from the 
regions in which they had been settled by Probus and it took 


1 Eutropius, ix, 25; Orosius, vii, 25; Eusebius, Chron. Canon., 2310 
(p. 187, ed. Schoene); Ammian., xxviii, 1, 7; Eumenius, Poaseg. 
Constantio 5. ; 


* Vopiscus, Probus, 15; 18; Zosimus, 1, 68; 71. 

3 Vopiscus, Probus, 15. “‘ Subacta est omnis qua tenditur late Germania 
... Omnes jam barbari vobis arant, vobis jam serunt, et contra interiores 
gentes militant.” 

*Zosimus, i, 71. ‘‘ Baordpvac dé, SKvOiKdv ébvoc, imomecdvrag avr7q mpocé- 
Mevog xaTusktos Opaxiow ywpiow, Kai dlerédeoav Toie ‘Pwpaiwy Biotevovtec vdpo. 
kat &paykwv 7O@ Bacidet mpoceAGdv7ov Kat TvxXdSvTwY oiKZOEwC poipa TLC ATOCTaCa, 
TAoiwy svmopioaca, 7iv ‘EAAdda ouvetadpasev axacayv, Kat LineAia mpocoyxcvoa 
Kai TH Svpaxovoiav mpoouitaca woAvy nata Tavtyy eipyacato gdvov, 7dyH dé Kai 
AiBoy xpocoppicheica, Kar Groxpovobsioa duvauewc tx Kapynddvoc éxevex@eionc, 
ola Te péyovev arabic éeravedGeiv oixade,’’ 


83 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES &3 


several pitched battles with the imperial forces before they 
were subdued again.” | 

As we get farther away from the legal adscription of the 
coloni in the fourth century, the barbarian settlements ap- 
.pear less and less like the distribution of the Scyrae as 
coloni among various proprietors. The settlements of Pro- 
bus seem to have been in military preserves, in several cases 
insufficiently guarded, so that the barbarians broke out and 
ravaged their way back to the home land. Probably their 
condition did not differ greatly from that of the natives in 
provinces incorporated in the Empire paying tribute to 
Rome, except in the closer supervision and higher rents paid 
on the imperial domains which caused some of the barbarians 
to revolt. But there is nothing in the evidence of the settle- 
ments of Probus which gives valid ground for believing that 
the status of the transplanted barbarian served as a proto- 
type for the colonate. 

Probus’ predecessors, Aurelian and Claudius IT both trans- 
planted barbarians within the realm, Aurelian in Etruria,’ 
and Claudius in Macedonia and Thrace.* <A’ passage in 


1Vopiscus, Probus, 18 “Ad Thracias rediit (Probus), et centum milla 
Bastarnarum in solo Romano constituit; qui omnes fidem servaverunt. 
Sed guum et ex aliis gentibus plerosque pariter transtulisset, id est ex 
Gepidis, Gautunnis, et Vandalis, illi omnes fidem fregerunt et, occupato 
bellis tyrannicis Probo, per totum paene orbem, pedibus et navigando, 
vagati sunt, nec parum molestiae Romanae gloriae intulerunt. Quos 
quidem ille diversis vicibus, variisque victoriis oppressit.” 

2 Vopiscus, Awrel., 48. 

3Zosimus, i, 46. ‘‘ d00c (LKxyOdv) dreodByoav i taypaot 'Popaioy ovvypibyi- 
Gyoav, } yiv AaBdvrec tig yewpyiav Tatty mpoocexaprépyoay,’’ In later years 
Fustel de Coulanges placed great emphasis on this passage and trans- 
lated it, “ Parmi ceux qui échappérent au massacre, Jes uns furent in- 
corporés dans les corps de troupes romaines, les autres recurent de la 
terre a cultiver et furent attachés a cette terre”’ Recherches sur quelques 
problémes d’histoire, pp. 44-45. ‘But the passage ‘‘ y#v AaBdvres sig yewp- 
ylay ratty mpocexaprépyoav’’ translated literally merely says ‘‘ taking the 
land for cultivation, they adhered firmly to it.” The Latin translation of 


84 THE ROMAN COLONATE [84 


Trebellius Pollio in regard to the settlements of Claudius, 
Zumpt held as one of the most important evidences of his 
theory.* ‘“ Roman provinces,” said Pollio, “ were filled with 
barbarian slaves and Scythian cultivators. From a Goth 
the barbarian was made a soldier and a colonus, and there 
was no region which did not have Gothic slaves in a kind of 
triumphant servitude.” * Part of the Goths, said Zumpt in 
his interpretation of this text, were used as slaves, but part 
as cultivators who were expressly called colont and who were 
subject to military service.* However, the use of colom in 
regard to the transplanted barbarians is not as significant as 
it at first appears. Colonus at the time of Claudius’ victory 
over the Goths (269 A. D.) still meant a free tenant.* The 
eulogistic phrases of the panegyrist Pollio can be of little 
assistance in determining just what the status of the trans- 
planted Goths was. 

Fortunately the references in regard to the settlements 
of Marcus Aurelius are more specific. The three principal 
barbarian tribes with whom Marcus fought were the Mar- 
comanni, the Iazyges, and the Quadi.” In 168 A. D. Marcus 
defeated the Marcomanni and their allies, and, according to 
the report of Julius Capitolinus, “he received the Mar- 


Lowenklau, in the edition of 1670, is “vel terram colendam nacti, totos 
agriculturae se dediderunt.” Fustel de Coulanges manifestly is in error 
in saying that the Scyths “furent attachés a cette terre” like the later 
ser{-coloni. | 

Cf.) LINDE Ope Cn DI OlG, 

?Treb. Pollio, Claudius, 9. ‘“‘Impletae barbaris servis, Scythibusque 
cultoribus Romanae provinciae. Factus miles barbarus et colonus ex 
Gotho; nec ulla fuit regio, quae Gothum servum triumphali quodam 
servitio non haberet.” 

5 Zumpt, op. cit., p. 16. 

* Cf. Dig., xix, 2, 14. “Quid ad certum tempus conducit...colonus 
est “ Dig., xix, 2, 25, 2. “Quin liceat colono vel inquilino relinquere 
conductionem, nulla dubitatio est.” Cf. Dig., xix, 2, 24; xlix, 14, 3, 6. 

® Dio Cassius, [xxii, I1; 19. 


85] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES Ss 


comanni in surrender and transplanted very many into 
Italy.” * The Quadi likewise sued for peace and surrendered 
all their captives and large numbers of horses and cattle.* 


Besides these who came to Marcus, many others dispatched 
envoys ... . offering to surrender themselves. Some of 
them were sent on campaigns to other parts of the world. 
. . .. Others received land in Dacia or in Pannonia or 
in Moesia (the Danube provinces) and Germany and Italy 
itself. A few of them who settled at Ravenna made an upris- 
ing and even dared to take possession of the city; and for this 
reason he did not again bring any barbarian into Italy, but made 
even those who had previously come there find homes outside.* 


Seven years later (175 A. D.) land north of the Danube 
was assigned to the Marcomanni and the Quadi,* while the 
Tazyges, who had formerly lived north of the Black Sea, 
were given land west of Dacia and north of the Danube and 
compelled to furnish 8000 recruits.° 


And when the Iazyges proved themselves most useful to him 
(Marcus) he released them from many of the restrictions im- 
posed upon them, indeed, from all, save from the arrangements 
made in regard to their gathering and mutual intercourse, and 
the provisions that they should not use boats of their own and 
should keep away from the islands in the Danube. And he 
permitted them to go through Dacia and have dealings with the 
Rhoxolani as often as the governor of Dacia would give them 
permission.® 


1 Capitolinus, Marcus, 22. “Accepit in deditionem Marcomannos, 
plurimis in Italiam traductis.” 

2 Dio Cassius, Ixxii, 11. 

3 Tbid., |xii, 11 (trans. by Foster). 

* Ibid., Ixxii, 15. 

5 Ibid., xxii, 16. 

§ Tbid., 1xxii, 19. 


86 THE ROMAN COLONATE [86 


This passage in regard to the lazyges from Dio was used 
by Zumpt to show that the transplanted barbarians were not 
slaves. Slaves were not permitted to make five hundred- 
mile journeys through a whole province in order to trade 
with their former neighbors.’ But Dio’s description of the 
Tazyges is certainly no more applicable to coloni than to 
slaves. Restrictions in regard to assemblies, the use of 
boats, and long commercial journeys had nothing to do 
with serfs attached in perpetuity to the soil. They seem far 
more aptly to concern a subject people owing tribute and 
military service and kept to their obligations by the strict 
military control of the Roman legions. This conclusion 
seems even more likely from a passage in the following 
chapter of Dio Cassius in regard to the Quadi and Mar- 
comanni who had settled on the border west of the lazgyes. 
* The Quadi and the Marcomanni,” said Dio, “ sent envoys 
to Marcus saying that the two myriads of soldiers that were 
in the forts would not allow them to pasture or till the soil 
or do anything else with freedom.” * The condition of the 
Tazyges, Quadi, and Marcomanni was manifestly not that of 
the colonate. It may be objected, indeed, that this strict 
miktary control existed only in the border. But it must be 
remembered that with the exception of the settlements in 
Italy all the barbarian settlements that were recorded were 
in provinces close to the northern frontier, Gaul, Illyria, the 
Danube provinces, Thrace, Macedonia, Germany and 
Britain; * and the unfortunate experience which Marcus had 
with the barbarians settled near Ravenna in Italy showed 
the shortcomings of the use of barbarians as cultivators of 
the soil without a sufficient armed force of legionaries in 
control. 


1 Zumpt, op. cit., p. 13. 
* Dio Cassius, Ixxii, 20, trans. by Foster. 


* A few of the Scyrae in the fifth century were granted to proprietors 
in Bythinia. Cf. Sozomenus, ix, 5. 


87] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 87 


The transplantation of the barbarians in Roman territory 
in the first century of the Empire was likewise largely in 
frontier settlements. In the reign of Nero, before the con- 
quest of Dacia, when the Danube still formed the boundary 
of the Empire, more than one hundred thousand barbarians 
from across the Danube, with their wives, children, princes, 
and kings were settled in the border province of Moesia, 
where they were compelled to pay tribute.* Tiberius settled 
forty thousand German dedititii on the left bank of the 
Rhine,” while a few years earlier Augustus, after he had 
driven the Germans back beyond the Elbe, installed the tribes 
of the Suebi and Sigambri on the Gallic side of the Rhine.* 
About the same time the Ubii were transferred from the 
right to the left bank of the Rhine,* and the Ardiaei and 
other Illyrian pirates were removed from the sea-coast to the 
hinterland. 


Later writers call the Ardiaei, Vardaei. The Romans drove 
them into the interior from the sea-coast, which was infested 
with their piracies, and compelled them to cultivate the ground ; 
but as the country was rugged and barren, and not adapted to 
husbandry, the nation was entirely ruined and nearly extin- 
guished. The same happened to other neighboring nations.° 


These passages cited by Huschke ® show plainly that the 


{ Orelli, Inscr. lat., 750... Moesiae, in qua plura quam centum mill. 
ex numero Transdanuvianor. ad praestanda tributa cum coniugib. ac, 
liberis principib. aut regibus suis transduxit.” 

* Eutropius, vii, 9. “Quo bello XL captivorum milia ex Germania 
(Tiberius) transtulit et supra ripam Rheni in Gallia conlocavit.” Cf. 
Suetonius, Tiberius, 9. 

2 Suetonius, Augustus, 21. “ Germanosque ultra Albim fluvium sum- 
movit, ex quibus Suebos et Sigambros dedentis se traduxit in Galliam 
atque in proximis Rheno agris conlocavit.” 

* Strabo, iv, 3, 4. 

* Strabo, vii, 5, 6 (trans. by Falconer). 

* Ueber den Census der friihern rémischen Kaiserzeit, pp. 160-162. 


88 THE ROMAN COLONATE [as 


_ barbarians were settled em masse in tribes under strong 
military control.” The settlements of the dedititit during 
the Republic were of the same general nature. In 180 B. C. 
forty thousand Ligurians were settled in Samnium. 


The Ligurians who did not expect an attack, were surprised and 
surrendered. Cornelius and Balbius determined to bring them 
down from their mountains into a plain country, so far from 
home that they would have no hope of a return. There was a 
tract of ager publicus of the Roman people among the Samnites 
which formerly had belonged to the Taurasinians. There forty 
thousand men of free condition with their women and children, 
were transplanted at the expense of the public.” 


Very similar, also was the condition of the Campanians, and 
the other Italian allies of Hannibal after the Second Punic 
War, according to Livy. 


They (the senate) ordered that all the Campanians, Atellanians, 
Calatinians, and Sabatinians should be free with a proviso that 
none of them should become Roman citizens or Latin con- 


? Huschke believed that the Triumpilini, one of the fifty-seven Alpine 
tribes mentioned by Pliny (N. H., iii, 24) in 77 A. D., were in the 
condition of coloni at that time. The meaning of the passage in Pliny 
describing them is obscure. “ Verso deinde Italiam pectore Alpium,... 
Triumpilini venalis cum agris suis populus,’—‘ on the Italian side of 
the Alps are the Triumpilini, a people for sale with their fields.” Bostock 
and Riley in a note on this passage (The Natural History of Pliny, i, 
p. 254, note 3) say that it probably means that the Triumpilini originally 
acknowledged their subjection to Rome for a sum of money, and De 
Grandsagne in his translation (Histoire naturelle de Pline, iii, p. 103) 
rendered the passage “les Triumpilins qui se sont vendus eux et leur 
territoire aux Romains.” Cf. supra, p. 59. 

4Liv., xl, 38. “Ligures, qui...non expectassent bellum, improviso 
oppressi...dediderunt se. Eos...deducere ex montibus in agros cam- 
pestres procul ab domo, ne reditus spes esset, Cornelius et Balbius 
statuerunt... Ager publicus populi Romani erat in Samnibus, qui Taura- 
sinorum furat. Eo...traducti sunt publico sumptu ad quadraginta 
milia liberorum capitum cum feminis puerisque.” 


89 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 89 


federates; that a place should be assigned to them to inhabit 
beyond the Tiber but not contiguous to it; that neither they 
themselves nor their posterity should acquire or possess any 
property anywhere except in the Veientian, Sutrian, or Nepetian 
territories; and that no one should possess a greater extent of 
land than fifty jugera.* i 


oe 


We have presented in the preceding pages all of the 
important references upon which the theory of Zumpt and 
Huschke was based. In no case before the Constitutio.de 
Scyris is there unmistakable evidence that the barbarians 
were settled as coloni. Most of the references seem rather 
to point to mass settlements of barbarians under their own 
leaders in assigned districts where they were forced to pay 
tribute and to furnish recruits for the legions. It was a 
condition not at all unlike that of the native inhabitants of 
newly conquered Roman provinces. In both cases a large 
number of troops was required to see that the tribute was 
collected and that the conquered people did not revolt or 
leave their homes. The barbarians might object, like the 
Marcomanni and Quadi, to this irksome military super- 
vision, but repeated experiences of the difficulty of holding 
the barbarians in regions assigned to them had shown the 
Romans that it was necessary. The limitation of the right 
to free movement, however, was applied to the tribe as a 
whole and not to individuals. None of the references cited 
above indicate that the individual barbarian was attached to 
any particular plot of land which he must cultivate and 
which neither he nor his children might leave. The colo 

1Liv., xxvi, 34. ‘“‘Campanos omnis, Atellanos, Calatinos Sabatinos... 
liberos esse iusserunt ita, ut nemo eorum civis Romanus aut Latini nominis 
esset;... locus ubi habitarent trans Tiberim, qui non contingeret Tiberim, 
daretur;...ne ipsi posterive eorum uspiam pararent habitarentve nisi in 
Veiente, Sutrino Nepesinove agro; dum ne cui maior quam quinquaginta 
iugerum agri modus esset.” Cf. Appian, Bell. Han., 61; Strabo, v, 4, 13; 
vi, i, 2 and 3. 


90 THE ROMAN COLONATE [90 


nate was not the condition of a subject and alien nationality 
but was a mutually binding relationship which existed be- 
tween single peasants and the proprietor of the land which 
they held as perpetual tenants. 

planted barbarians bet Oloni, just as the descendants of 
the native peasantry of the provinces and of the Italian 
agricultural tenantry eventually formed the material from 
which the serf-coloni were obtained. But the influence of 
barbarian settlements in the evolution of the condition of the 
peasantry was enormously exaggerated by Zumpt and his 
followers. At no time was the number of barbarians 
settled in Roman territory more than an insignificant frac- 
tion of the agricultural population of the Empire.* It is 
far more likely that the economic status of the descendants 
of the transplanted barbarians should gradually have merged 
itself into the condition of the peasantry of the surrounding 
districts, than that the condition of the barbarians should 
have served as the model and prototype for that of the 
indigenous peasantry. Not only was the number of trans- 
planted barbarians relatively small in relation to the agri- 
cultural population of the Empire, but the barbarians were 
located in only a few provinces. All the numerically im- 
portant barbarian settlements were along the northern fron- 
tier, where agriculture was a consideration distinctly secon- 
dary to that of defense. Only occasionally do we hear of 
barbarians being transported to Thrace, Macedonia or Italy. 
In the great grain provinces of Africa, Egypt, Sicily and 
Spain, where agriculture was of supreme importance and 
where there was little danger of invasion, there is not the 
slightest evidence that barbarian settlements were ever made 
or even contemplated. The colonate was primarily organ- 
ized to insure the steady cultivation of the land. It was the 


1Cf. Terrat, Du colonat en droit romain, p. 96. 


QI | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES QI 


last desperate remedy of a decaying empire applied in hopes 
of checking the universal desertion of the fields which 
threatened the very existence of Roman civilization. An 
adequate explanation of its origin must rest on conditions 
far more fundamental and universal than the transplanta- 
tion of barbarian dedititit in the Empire. 

The last theory of the colonate to be introduced before 
1850 was the theory of administrative pressure. Advocated 
simultaneously in 1847 by Wallon in France and by Hegel 
in Germany, it apparently had not come to the attention of 
Savigny in 1849, for he does not mention it in his review 
of the theories of the colonate. But once read it received 
ready acceptance and in the period between 1850 and 1880 
it formed the almost exclusive basis for the theories of the 
colonate. Hegel presented little more than a skeleton out- 
line and Wallon’s treatment of the problem was filled with 
highly questionable assumptions; yet to the writers of the 
next generation the germs of a more satisfactory explanation 
of the origin of the colonate seemed to lie in their treatises 
than in the earlier theories. The period from 1850 to 1880 
was largely devoted to the further development of the theory 
of administrative pressure. 


CHAPTER IV 


THe THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 


THE first writer in the second half of the century to take 
up the problem of the colonate was Revillout.* He developed 
the theory of administrative pressure far more comprehen- 
sively than either Hegel or Wallon, and at the same time 
limited administrative pressure to a question of taxation. 
With the general thesis of Wallon, Revillout stated that he 
was in agreement,” but while Wallon believed that traces of 
predial serfdom were to be found from the beginning of the 
Empire, Revillout maintained that the serf-colonate was an 
institution expressly created by Constantine and his stucces- 
sors.” So-called colonit existed from the beginning of 
Roman history, but they were not serfs. The earliest colo- 
nus was a peasant proprietor. Later the word colonus was 
used almost exclusively to designate a small tenant cultivat- 
ing a plot of the ager publicus or of a patrician’s estate. 
With the growth of Roman power, however, there came a 
great concentration of landed property; slaves took the place 
of freemen as cultivators of the fields, and the tenant-coloni 
disappeared except in outlying regions. But there was a 
return to the earlier conditions when the more peaceful policy 
of the Empire ¢ a shortage of slaves, and the est 
the Tobles came once more 10 OE ee 


1“tude sur l’histoire du colonat chez les Romains,” in the Revue 
historique de droit francais et étranger, vol. ii (1856), pp. 417-460; 
vol. iii (1857), pp. 209-246, 343-368. 
1 Ibid., iii, p. 366. 
3 Ibid., ili, pp. 223, 225 et seq. 
92 [92 


93] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 93 


tenants held short-term leases, usually five years in duration, 
aiter the expiration of which they were legally free to leave. 
In actual practice, however, the tenants ordinarily cultivated 
the same piece of land for a much longer period, for the pro- 
prietors offered them many inducements to stay on their 
leaseholds. Yet, neither a private proprietor* nor the 
fiscus°’ was permitted by law to retain a peasant by force 
after his lease had expired. 

However, notwithstanding the encouragements given to 
tenant-coloni to remain on their holdings the stretches of 
deserted land continued to increase. Various expedients 
were tried to restore these lands to cultivation. Pertinax 
granted deserted land in full property to anyone who would 
guarantee to cultivate it.* Marcus Aurelius and several of 
his successors settled barbarians on abandoned land, not as 
serfs, indeed, but as military tenants. Similarly veterans 
of the legions were given liberal grants of land on the 
borders of the Empire. But nevertheless, the heavy taxes 
on the land caused tenants everywhere to desert their hold- 
ings as unprofitable and go to swell the city mob or else 
join the bands of vagabonds and highwaymen which in- 
fested the country." 

The most serious consequence of the agri deserti was the 
inability of the abandoned land to furnish the taxes on which 
the state had formerly relied; and with the increased ex- 
penses caused by the reorganization of the Empire by Dio- 
cletian, more revenue than ever was required. The old 
system of tax administration had left the collection of taxes 
to municipal magistrates known as decaprotes*.who were 


1 Cod. Just., iv, 65, 11. 

2 Dig., xlix, 14, 3, 6. 

3 Herod., ii, 4, 12. 

* Revillout, of. cit., 1ii, 214. 
$ Literally, “the first ten.” 


94 THE ROMAN COLONATE [94 


responsible with their total wealth for the assessed amount. 
The system had formerly operated with conspicuous success. 
The state had received its revenues regularly and the de- 
caprotes had been amply remunerated for their responsibility. 
But when the higher taxes of the tetrarchy had caused a 
rapid increase in the number of fields which were deserted, 
the decaprotes found themselves forced to make up the loss 
from the non-paying land out of their own wealth; and 
many of them were ruined. The ruin of the city magis- 
trates, which increased rapidly, threatened to break down 
the whole municipal organization of the Empire, a result 
which could not but have the most disastrous consequences 
on the whole administrative system. To prevent this the 
emperors found it necessary to introduce certain changes 
in the method of tax collection, which brought about as one 
of its results the adscription of the peasantry to the sotl.* 
Constantine took several measures to relieve the burdens 
which were crushing the city magistrates. Municipal sena- 
tors were no longer held responsible for each other’s liabili- 
ties to the crown.” The responsibility for the taxes of de- 
serted land was taken away from the city administration 
and placed on the proprietors of the land.* The city capita- — 
tion tax, for which the senators had been responsible, was 
removed,‘ while the proprietors were made responsible for 
the taxes of the peasants on their own lands.° But if the 
landlords were not to be ruined by the taxes of their tenants, 
it was necessary to prevent the tenants leaving their estates. 
Hence the coloni were attached to the soil. ‘‘ The govern- 


1 Tbid., iii, p. 216. 

2 Cod. Theod., x1, 7, 2 (319 A. D.). 
° Cod. Just., xi, 59, I and 2. 

* Cod: J ust., xi, 40,2 (313A D.), 
* God. ned, xi, '9,' 2. 


95 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 95 


ment could not make the possessor responsible for the tribute 
of his tenants without giving him at the same time the right 
to keep him; so that the perpetual colonate developed natur- 
ally out of this financial measure.” * 

The adscription of the col ou in the interests 
of taxation was not as violent an innovation in fiscal policy 
as at first would appear, for Revillout held that it was noth- 
ing but a more rigorous application of the earlier fiscal prin- 
ciple of origo.? The principle of origo entailed on each in- 
dividual the obligation of participating in the taxes of the 
place of his birth. At first orvigo merely united the plebeian 
to his municipality and the city senator to his curia. Later 
there developed among the plebeians a number of religious 
colleges and corporations or gilds of the various crafts. 
These societies were made responsible for a series of public 
functions and in return for the performance of these duties, 
they received certain immunities from taxes. The corpora- 
tions were responsible for the taxes of their members who 
were bound to them by the same ties of origo as those which 
united the senator to his curia. But in the middle Empire 
there seems to have been no obligation to remain in one’s 
corporation or curia. The corporations and colleges were 
institutions apparently mutually advantageous to their mem- 
bers and the state and consequently they maintained them- 
selves without the use of force. But during the half-cen- 
tury of anarchy which followed the death of Alexander 
Severus (234 A.D.) these institutions decayed rapidly. 
The senator abandoned his_curia where the burdens were 
heavy, the plebeian left his college or corporation, and the 
tenant-colonus deserted his holding. Such a wholesale dis- 

1 Revillout, of. cit., iii, p. 217. “ Le gouvernement ne pouvait rendre 
le possesseur responsable du tribut de ses fermiers, sans lui donner en 


méme temps le droit de les retenir; de sorte que le colonat perpétuel 
sortait naturellement de cette mesure financiére.” 


4 Loc. cit. 


96 THE ROMAN COLONATE [96 


solution of the inner constitution of society in the Empire 
upon which the entire fiscal system had been based proved 
to be disastrous to the machinery of taxation. On that ac- 
count, then, when the Empire was reorganized into the 
tetrarchy, the government decided both to restore the old 
principle of origo and to apply it in a very much more vigor- 
ous way than in the middle Empire. All classes were bound 


to the condition of their_birth, the city senater to his curia, 
the government TS bureaux, 
the soldiers to their legions, and the city plebeians to their 
colleges and_corporations;_and_in Les 
the tenant colonus_was attached to his estat@71 tuity.* 
Later, to complete the stratification of society, villagers were 
attached to their villages* and agricultural slaves to the 
soil.* Thus the tax system was restored. The corpora- 
tion could now be held responsible for the taxes of its mem- 
bers who were bound to it without the possibility of leaving, 
while the proprietor could be held for the taxes of his coloni 
who could now no longer desert their holdings. And as 
time went on the adscription of the coloni came to be more 
and more strictly enforced until they became in fact servi 
terrae tpsius.* 

Hegel and Wallon had laid the foundation for the theory 
of administrative pressure, but the essay of Revillout brought 
the theory into the vanguard and profoundly influenced all 
subsequent theories. The earlier theories of the colonate 
had principally concerned themselves with the sources from 
which the serf-coloni of the Codes were derived; but the 
conditions which brought about legislation of Constantine 
and his successors had been almost wholly neglected. Re- 





! Tbid., iii, p. 222. 

2 Cod. Theod., xi, 24, 1 and 6. 

"Cod. Just., xi, 48,:7. 

* Revillout, of. cit., ili, pp. 223 et seq. 


97 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 97 


villout, on the other hand, emphasized the circumstances 
which led up to the actual adscriptio-glebae itself; but objec- 
tions were soon raised that his treatment of the sources of 
the coloni were inadequate.’ Revillout rejected the view 
that there had been a continuous development of earlier ser- 
vile conditions, that barbarians were settled in the Empire as 
serfs, or that there had been a limited manumission of slaves. 
The source from which the serf-coloni were formed was the 
free tenantry on the great estates, he asserted.* But before 
a free tenantsy can be accepted as the source of the coloni 
it is rene facie in The Tet place it must 
be shown that there existed a free tenantry on the Jatifundia 
in numbers sufficient to form the basis of the colonate. Sec- 
ondly, proof must be offered that these peasants were already 
in a condition of hereditary dependence, for otherwise, it 
would have been easier to adapt a system of taxation to the 
. condition of the population, rather than the condition of the 
population to the system of taxation. It is true that both 
these details received some consideration in Revillout’s essay. 
The cessation af the importation of slaves, he said, rendered 
it necessary for proprietors to rely more and more on a free 
tenantry, and he cited passages in Varro, Columella, the 
younger Pliny, and the Digest which seemed to indicate the 
change. And as concerns the second consideration, he 
argued that these tenants were held in a more or less station- 
ary condition by a fiscal principle of ortgo similar to that 
which the Digest cited in regard to city plebeians who were 
members of corporations.* ‘But in neither case are the 
texts which Revillout offered sufficient to do more than 
indicate the possibility of his conclusions. Consequently 


1 Cf. Heisterbergk, Die Enistehung des Colonats, pp. 33-38. 
® Revillout, of. cit., iii, pp. 209 ef seq. 

3 [bid., ii, pp. 449-454. 

* [bid., iii, pp. 217-218. 


98 THE ROMAN COLONATE [98 


subsequent writers, after they had accepted Revillout’s con- 
clusions as to the importance which administrative pressure 
played in the formation of the colonate, attempted at the 
same time to throw more light upon the condition of the 
peasants who were converted into serf-coloni by the legis- 
lation of the late emperors. 

The first writer to take up this problem was Serrigny, 
whose Droit public et admintstratif romain appeared in 
1862." Among the previous explanations of the sources of 
the serf-coloni the theory of Giraud, that the colonate was 
formed on one side by “la population libre dégénérée ” and 
on the other by “la population servile améliorée ”’ seemed to 
Serrigny to be the most acceptable.” But savants in Roman 
law, such as Savigny, while they recognized the attractive- 
ness of such a simple solution of the problem, felt that the 
transformation of freemen and slaves into a common imter- 
mediate class was contrary to all the canons of Roman law 
without an express edict to that effect; and of such an edict 
there is not the slightest trace. 

Serrigny, however, believed that he had found a solution 
to this difficulty which he said ‘‘ would serve to make clear 
the origin of the colonate, a question which has appeared so 
obscure to so many eminent men but which to us appears 
easy.’ * Previous dissertations on the colonate had treated 
the coloni as if they were all of one class. In reality, said 
Serrigny, there were , es, slave coloni and free 
coloni.* The distinction between the two was most plainly 
set forth by a law of Anastasius in the Justinian Code. 


1 Cf. vol. ii, pp. 386-426. 

* Giraud, Histoire du droti francais, 160-161; Serrigny, op. cit., ii, p. 380. 

5 Fhid., ii, p. 390. “...va nous servir pour éclairer lorigine du colonat, 
question qui a paru si obscure a tant d’hommes éminents, et qui nous 
semble facile.’ 


* Ibid., 11, p. 380. 


99 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 99 


Of the peasants (agricolae) some are adscripticti whose peculia 
belong to the lords, while others are coloni after a prescription 
of thirty years, who nevertheless remain free together with their 
property ; yet the latter also are forced to cultivate the land and 
pay the tributum.* 


Slave coloni were mentioned frequently in the Codes under 
the names servi and censiti servi, as well as adscripticit; * 
while free coloni are often specifically called liberi.? Their 
children likewise remained free but attached forever to the 
land which their fathers cultivated.* The free coloni were 
“slaves of the soil” indeed, but in their personal condition 
they were called “ free born” (ingenut).° 

With this distinction in mind Serrigny felt that it was con- 
siderably SS carnal eae cena tan The 
source of the slave-colonate was the slave population of the 
ereat latifundia. From the time of the conquest of Car- 
thage estates of great size commenced to develop in Italy 
which came to be cultivated by the enormous masses of the 
enslaved captives of Rome’s foreign wars. But the harsh 
and pitiless system of Roman slavery soon proved itself to 
be as unprofitable as it was cruel; and Pliny could cry with 
reason, “‘ Latifundia perdidere Italiam.”° Before long, 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 19. “Agricolarum alii adscripticii sunt, quorum 
peculia ad dominos pertinent, alii triginta annorum tempore coloni fiunt, 
liberi tamen cum rebus suis manent; atenim hi quoque et terram colere 
et tributum solvere coguntur.” 5 

2B. g., Cod. Just., xi, 48, laws 3, 7 and 12. 

SE. g., Cod. Just., xi, 69, 1. “Si liber colonus vel colona libera... 
matrimonii jure copuletur.” 

4 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23, 1. “Sancimus liberos colonorum esse quidem 
in perpetuum...liberos et nulla deteriori conditione praegravari;...sed 
semper terrae inhaereant, quam semel colendam patres eorum susceperuni.” 

5 Cod. Just., xi, 52, 1. “‘ Licet condicione videantur ingenut, servi tame 
terrae ipsius, cui nati sunt aestimentur.” 


© Serrigny, op. cit., il, p. 393. 


100 THE ROMAN COLONATE [ 100 


however, masters who wished to make the most profit from 
their slaves introduced the practice of letting out plots of 
land to their slaves for rent, thus making the efforts of the 
slave himself responsible for his well-being. This system 
proved as lucrative to the proprietor as it was advantageous 
to the slave and Constantine and his successors, in their 
desire to further the interests of agriculture, legalized this 
condition in the slave-colonate.* 

So far as the free coloni were concerned there were three 
sources from which they were derived. In the first place 
there were certain freemen who voluntarily became the 
coloni of the rich in order to escape military service and 
avoid the payment of the taxes. Previous writers had ob- 
jected to this argument on the ground that it was contrary to 
Roman law for freemen to subject themselves to a servile 
condition,” but Serrigny emphasized the fact that the liber 
colonus was still absolutely free in his personal status, and 
consequently would not be affected by this law. 

As a second source of the free colonate Serrigny brought 
in the barbarian settlements to which attention had already 
been directed by so many previous writers. As a third 
source, however, he introduced a new element which had 
hitherto escaped notice as a possible origin of the colonate. 
This was the freedman of inferior condition. The lowest 
class of freedmen were known as the [tbertint dedttitu. 
They were former slaves who-hattbeerruilty of some mis- 
conduct before their emancipation * and who for that reason 
had become incapable of the rights of Roman citizenship. — 
As freedmen they held exactly the same civil rights as the 
dedititii with certain additional obligations to their patron.’ 


1 Thid., pp. 394, 403. 
PGF G:, 4)/5,) Sy 1s 

3 Gaius, Institutes, i, 13. 
4 Pd AES ly) 75. 





101] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 101 


Like the barbarian dedititw, Serrigny maintained, the liber- 
tim dedititit were used as cultivators of the fields of their 
patrons in a semi-servile condition." Somewhat more sim- 
ilar to the later free coloni were the Latimi Jumiam. These 
were freedmen who held an intermediate position between 
the libertint dedititu and the freedmen with full rights. In- 
stead of receiving Roman citizenship with their manumission 
like the freedmen proper, they merely obtained the inferior 
rights of the Latins, and instead of having complete con- 
trol over a part of their property as ordinary freedmen, all 
their property was in the possession of their patron as slaves’ 
peculia. ‘This class became very numerous during the Ekm- 
pire and Serrigny believed that they formed the principal 
source from which the later coloni were recruited. In 
actual practice, he said, the Junian Latins on the great estates 
were in exactly the same condition as the coloni after the 
legislation of the Codes.* 

That the coloni from these various sources were by the 
third century already being very closely identified with the 
land is to be seen from the decision of Marcian, that ‘if 
anyone has bequeathed inquilini without the estates to which 
they are united the bequest is null and void,” * and that oi 
Ulpian, that ‘if anyone has not declared his wnquilinus or 
colonus, he will be held accountable by census laws.” “ But 
the complete adscription of the coloni, according to Serrigny, 
did not come until the legislation of the fourth century. The 
force which brought about this final transformation was the 
all-powerful despotism of the imperial administration. The 
cause was the belief on the part of the emperors that the 


1 Serrigny, of. cit., p. 400. 

4 fbid., p. 401. 

3 Dig., XXX, I, 112, pr. Cf. supra, pp. 31, 58. 
4 Dig., L, 15, 4,8. Cf. supra, p. 58. 


102 THE ROMAN COLONATE [102 


inner decay in the Empire could only be checked by the 
complete immobilization of all classes of society from the 
aristocracy to all inferior orders in a rigid caste system. 
And so far as the coloni, as the most numerous of the in- 
ferior orders of society, were concerned, “ the initerest re- 
spectively of the proprietor and of the colonus, and the gen- 
eral interest led to this disposition, because, in the opinion of 
the legislator, it concerned the good culture of the land.” * 
Serrigny’s main contribution to the development of the 
theories of the colonate lay in his emphasis on the distinction 
which existed between the free coloni and the servi adscrip- 
tic, the slaves attached to the soil. It was a distinction 
which had been made before, indeed, in discussions of the 
legal status of the coloni and the slaves of the late Empire as 
revealed by the Codes; but its importance had not been pre- 
viously recognized in explanations of the origin of the 
colonate. It showed that the development of slave tenures 
on the latifundia in the second and third centuries did not 
lead, as Puchta had thought, to the colonate but to the slave 
adscripticiate; and it cleared the way to the conclusion that 
the coloni must be derived from a free and not a slave origin. 
Unfortunately, Serrigny’s discussion of the sources from 
which the free colonate developed was not so satisfactory 
as his treatment of the origin of the slave adscripticiate. 
He mentioned three sources of origin, freemen who became 
coloni of the rich to avoid military services and taxation, 
barbarian dedititii, and freedmen of inferior grades. His 
first category, however, referred rather to clientage than to 
the colonate. The coloni were subject both to military ser- 
vice and taxation. In fact, after they had been legally at- 
tached to a lord’s estate, the government found the work of 


*Serrigny, of. cit., p. 402. “ L’intérét respectif du propriétaire et du 
colon, et lintérét general...amenérent cette disposition... parce qu’elle 
intéressait, dans l’opinion du législateur, la bonne culture des terres.” 


103 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 103 


tax assessment and military enlistment considerably ex- 
pedited. Coloni, as well as freemen; in the late Empire 
became clients of powerful patrons in order to evade the 
crushing burden of taxation and the distasteful wars * against 
northern barbarians. But clientage was a movement away 
from the colonate and not toward it. The descendants of 
the barbarian dedititit, as we have seen, may have formed 
one of the sources from which coloni were derived in the 
northern provinces; but their numbers were too small to 
make them a class of great significance. In Italy the freed- 
men, especially the large number of Junian Latins during the 
early Empire, must have formed an important element in 
the agricultural population. But the freedmen were not an 
hereditary class, for their children became ingenus (free 
born), and Serrigny made no effort to show that a permanent 
dependent class of the offspring of freedmen developed on 
the /atifundia as small tenants of the rich. Serrigny’s ideas 
as to the sources of the free colonate were suggestive, but 
much work still remained to be done to show that there 
existed a small tenantry on the Jatifundia in sufficient num- 
bers and widely enough distributed throughout the Empire 
to have formed the basis of the serf-coloni. It was largely 
to the solution of this problem that the next two important 
writers, Rodbertus and Heisterbergk, directed their attention. 

Rodbertus’ essay appeared in 1864 in Hildebrand’s newlv 
founded Jahrbiicher fiir Nationaldkonome und Statistik.” 
The previous discussion of the colonate had been largely 
confined to scholars in Roman law and ancient history. One 
group had been mainly concerned with formulating a theory 
which would be consistent with the principles of Roman law, 


‘CF. Rostovtzeff, Journal of Roman Studies, vol. viii (1918), p. 31. 


2 Zur Geschichte der agrarischen Entwickelung Roms unter den 
Kaisern, oder die Adscriptitier, Inquilinen, und Colonen.” Jahrbicher, 
vol. ii (1864), pp. 206-268. 


104 THE ROMAN COLONATE [104 


while the second group had attempted to link the colonate io 
other historical facts such as previous types of seridom, 
barbarian settlements, or the general caste system of the 
late Empire. But no attempt had been made to relate the 
development of the colonate to general economic laws as 
set forth by the political economy of the day; and in this 
Rodbertus broke new ground. 

The year before the essay of Rodbertus appeared Von 
Thtinen published the complete edition of Der Isolirte Staat.* 
This was a highly abstract work in economic theory in which 
Von Thtinen took a simple imaginary situation and then 
attempted to determine what conclusions could be validly 
drawn from it by deductive reasoning. He pictured a com- 
pletely isolated community, in the center of which was a | 
great city surrounded on all sides by a fertile plain cut by no 
navigable waterway. He then raised the question as to the 
forms in which agriculture would develop about the city, 
and the way that distance from the city would affect the ut:l- 
ization of the land. Around the city, he said, a series of 
concentric circles might be drawn, each circle including 
within its area the land devoted to a particular type of cul- 
ture. In the central circle perishable and bulky products 
would be produced, such as market-garden produce and milk. 
Because of its favorable situation land would be more 1m- 
portant than labor and consequently the most intensive cul- 
ture would be profitable. In the outer circles transportable 
products like grain would be produced and the cultivation 
would become less intensive the more distant the district was 
from the city. Finally in the most distant circles the land 
would be used only for pasture or left waste.’ 

Rodbertus believed that such a condition as represented 


' The first volume had been published in 1826. 
? Rodbertus, op. cit., pp. 221-222. Cf., Von Thtinen, Der Isolirte Siaat, 
vol. i, pp. I-5, 384 et seq. 


105 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 105 


by Von Thunen in his hypothetical state, actually existed in 
the case of Rome. During the Empire Italy formed the first 
circle which furnished the capital with garden produce and 
dairy products, while the provinces corresponded to the 
more distant circles of Von Thiinen which supplied the city 
with grain. Consequently the land in Italy was intensively 
cultivated in small garden plots (Zwerg-Parzellenwirt- 
schaft) while in the provinces the large-scale plantation 
system (Latifundienwirtschaft) was in force. This condi- 
tion had not always existed in Italy, but had developed with 
the spread of Roman conquests throughout the world. Dur- 
ing the Republic the slave-plantation system had held full 
sway in Italy and it was to this system rather than to the 
mere size of the estates that Pliny the Elder referred when 
he said that the latifundia had ruined Italy." But many re- 
ferences point to the fact that in the early Empire the large- 
scale plantation system had been transformed into a small- 
sale intensive system and that Italian land had come to be 
devoted to the cultivation of garden produce and poultry. 
Intensive methods of cultivation of the soil commenced to 
be used in Italy about the middle of the first century after 
Christ. Columella about 60 A.D. and Pliny the Elder 
twenty years later both described intensive cultivation in 
some detail,” and in addition Pliny mentioned the recent in- 
troduction of a harrow which improved tillage in no small 
degree.? Garden products, too, had been replacing grain 
for some time on Italian farms. Cato had placed grain as 
sixth in value in his list of profitable applications of the 
land, after garden products and meadow land,* while Colu- 


1Plin., N. H., xviii, 7. “...verumque confitentibus latifundia perdidere 
Italiam.” 

2Colum., De R. R., ii, 12. Plin., N. H., xviii, 49-53. 

* Plin., N. H., xviii, 48. 

4 Cato, De Agric., i, 6. 


106 THE ROMAN COLONATE [106 


mella stated that ‘‘ we scarcely are able to remember in the 
greater part of Italy when grain yielded four-fold.” * This 
was due not to any lack of fertility of Italian soil, said Rod- 
bertus, but to the fact that only the poorest land was used 
for grain, all the good land being applied to garden pro- 
ducts.“ In the time of Varro the raising of poultry proved 
far more profitable than grain,® while close to Rome the 
cultivation of roses, lilies, and violets yielded good re- 
turns.* Numerous, likewise, were the references to the cul- 
tivation of vegetables and fruit trees, of meadows for the 
dairyman’s cattle, and particularly olives and vines which 
were especially favored by the government with protective 
legislation. In fact, toward the close of the Republic, Italian 
agriculture had come to be so largely devoted to garden pro- 
ducts that Varro could exclaim, “Is not Italy so covered 
with fruit trees that it seems one vast orchard? ” ® 
References from classical writers, then, seemed to Rod- 
bertus to bear out the theoretical principles of Von Thunen 
that intensive cultivation and the growing of garden crops 
were characteristic of Italy as der erste Kreis of the Empire. 
But what consequences did this change have on the system 
of cultivation on the great estates? Intensive cultivation 
and truck farming require the minute attention of a cultiva- 
tor, who is directly interested in the gain or loss from his 
operations. To attempt to use slaves forced to work by the 
lash of the slave driver would be disastrous. “It is the 
very worst plan of all,” said Pliny, “ to have the land tilled 


'Colum., De R. R., iti, 3. “...frumenta majore quidem parte I[taliae 
quando cum quarto responderint, vix meminisse possumus.” 


* Rodbertus, of. cit., p. 218. 

PaviatrOn tik. avs, Ait, i, 

FAV ATCO) Cu, 1, 10 Ob lin ave ed eee 

‘Varro, R. R., i, 2. ‘Non arboribus consita Italia est, ut tota 
pomarium videatur?” 


107 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 107 


by slaves from the ergastwa. ... To cultivate land well 
is absolutely necessary, but to cultivate it in the highest 
style is mere extravagance, unless indeed the work is 
done by the hands of a man’s own children, his tenant, or 
someone he is supporting.’’* Consequently Rodbertus be- 
lieved that there was a change from the large-scale methods 
formerly in vogue on the latifundia to small-scale agricul- 
ture in which each cultivator tilled his own land and had a 
direct interest in the product which his land produced.* 
Further plausibility was added to this hypothesis by the fact 
that proprietors no longer lived on their estates and the ad- 
ministration of their slave-stewards was notably inefficient.° 
The latifundia system could only be maintained by leasing 
the land out to tenants, as Columella himself advised * for 
all regions except those close to Rome. | 

But where gvere tenants to be obtained? ‘There was no 
from the familia rustica were insufficient. Hence Rodbertus 
argued that slaves themselves must have been used as ten- 
ants, just as they had already been employed in the cities as 
agents on commission in booths and retail stores, and rent 
was paid in kind instead of money.® No text expressly des- 
cribed this change, Rodbertus admitted, yet he believed that 
the inferences from a number of classical references could 
lead to no other conclusion. Columella said that work 
rather than payments should be demanded from coloni,® a 


1 Plin., N. H., xviii, 7. “ Coli rura ab ergastulis pessumum est... Bene 
colere necessarium est, optime damnosum, praeterquam subole sua, colono, 
aut pascendis alioqui colente.” 


* Rodbertus, of. cit., pp. 213, 219-220. 

7 Colum., De R. R., 1, 7. 

* Colum., loc. cit. 

5 Rodbertus, of. cit., p. 224. 

*Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “...avarius opus exigat quam pensiones.” 


108 THE ROMAN COLONATE [108 


statement which would be very unusual if the coloni had 
been freemen instead of slaves. The younger Pliny in one 
of his letters * referred to the coloni to whom his estate was 
leased in small plots. He also said that he had no slaves in 
chains on the estate. His slaves, then, Rodbertus argued, 
must have been the coloni who were cultivating his estate 
in small-scale intensive agriculture and whom he spoke of 
later as paying share-rent.* In the Digest there was fre- 
quent mention of land leased to slaves. Alfenus spoke of a 
proprietor “ who had leased land to his slave to be cultivated 
and also gave him some cattle.” * Ulpian mentioned a slave 
‘who was on a plot of land like a colonus.”* A slave- 
steward (vilicus) according to Paulus might cultivate a piece 
of land paying his master a fixed rent; ° while another slave 
who farmed his land “not in the confidence of his master 
but for a rent, as coloni from outside are accustomed to do,” ° 
was cited by Scaevola as being in arrears in his rent. Finally 
Ulpian stated that the proprietors must declare their colon 
and inguilint in the tax-returns, an obligation which ob- 
viously could not relate to freemen.’ The coloni, then, in 
the opinion of Rodbertus were slaves cultivating their 
master’s estate for a rent.® 

The colonate was not yet at the time of the jurists of the 
Digest a legal institution, nor were the colont attached to 


1. Pliny, i psets, itt, 20. 


9 Tbidss 1X, 1375 

* Dig., xv, 3, 16. “Quidam fundum colendum servo suo locaverat, et 
boves ei dederat,...” 

* Dig., xxxiii, 7, 12, 3. “‘ Servus, qui quasi colonus in agro erat.” 

5 Dig., xxxiii, 7, 18, 4. .“... pensionis certa quantitate... coleretur.” 

° Dig., Xxxiii. 7, 20, 1. “...non fide dominica sed mercede ut extranei 


coloni solent.” 
+e uiirb, AL 8: 
® Rodbertus, op. cit., pp. 224-227. 


109 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 109 


the soil except in so far as they were compelled to do their 
master’s bidding. There was, however, even at this time 
a class of slaves which was specifically attached to the soil. 
Proprietors in the days when political advancement depended 
largely on winning the favor of the Roman mob by lavish 
spectacles frequently fell in debt and were forced to mortgage 
their estates. When the estate was pledged as security for 
a debt the slaves were included as part of the security. They 
could not be emancipated nor could they be alienated in any 
way. These slaves, then, were attached to the soil and were 
known usually as adscriptici.! They might be slaves work- 
ing on the estate in any capacity, and of course included the 
slave coloni and inquaint of the pledged estate. It was to 
these latter that Marcian referred when he said that inquilint 
could not be bequeathed from the estate to which they were 
attached.* 

Both the conditions slave colonate_and_ slave _ad- 


scripticiate eros hove yf the slaye. He 
had a home and permanent family relations and all the ad- 
vantages which accrued from them. In fact the condition 
of the slave had been steadily improving from the beginning 
of the Empire. The wars of conquest which had glutted 
the market with the great masses_of slaves largely ceased 
during the Empire, and with the sources of fresh ‘Supply of 
slaves thus cut off, it had been necessary for proprietor proprietors to 
breed and réar slaves on their _ow ations. The great- 
est encouragements were given to slaves to marry and pro- 
duce a numerous progeny. Columella said that the pro- 
 prietors who had the most productive estates were those 
who kept native coloni on their lands,* while Scaevola re- 








1 Thid., pp. 232-233. 

2 Dig., xxx, 1, 112, pr. Rodbertus, op. cit., p. 228. 

?Colum., i, 7. “ Patrisfamilias felicissimum fundum esse, qui colonos 
indigenas haberet.” | 


110 THE ROMAN COLONATE fr10 


ported that there were estates in Africa where slaves of the 
third generation were kept." 

In brief, then, in the opinion of Rodbertus the agricultural 
development from the beginning of the Empire to the acces- 
sion of Diocletian was somewhat as follows. The large- 
scale agriculture of the latifundia had changed to a small- 
scale cultivation with slaves as small tenants or coloni pay- 
ing a rent in kind. The chained slave kept at night in the 
ergastulum had disappeared and his place had been taken by 
a native slave stock, which enjoyed certain moderate privi- 
leges and which in the case of the adscripticit on mortaged 
estates could not be separated from the soil. By the legis- 
lation of Diocletian the slave coloni and adscripticu were 
united into one class while their adscription to the soil be- 
came universal and definite. 

There were two motives behind the reorganization in the 
agricultural conditions of the Empire effected by Diocletian 
and his successors. The first was to check the universal 
disintegration which was aftecting all parts of the social 
organization of the Empire. To prevent this from going 
any further, membership in all classes of society from the 
administrative bureaux to the peasantry was made fixed and 
hereditary. The second motive for the adscription of the 
slaves to the land came about through the exigencies of tax- 
ation. The old tributum which had been levied on land- 
owners, was changed by Diocletian into a land tax, called 
jugatio, and a capital tax, called capitatio ? which was levied 
principally on slaves and cattle. The tax was assessed in 
units, called juga and capita, each unit being evaluated at 
1000 solidi. As the assessment was made only once every ten 
or fifteen years on the occasion of the census, it was to the ad- 


a Ti KKK, 7, 27; 1. 
2 Most authorities however regard this as a poll tax. Cf. Humbert, 
Essai sur les finances chez les Romains, vol. i, pp. 367-368. 


Tir] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE Itt 


vantage of the government that an estate once having re- 
ceived an assessed valuation should retain it unchanged until 
the next census period. The land units (juga) did not 
change, but the capital units (capita) were always in a 
state of flux, as the masters could sell their slaves or move 
them from one place to another. Therefore in order to 
make the caput as stable a unit as the jugwm the slaves were 
attached to the soil." The higher taxes which came with 
the tetrarchy were shifted as far as possible from the land- 
lords to their tenant-slaves and at times the burden of these 
became so great as to cause wholesale flight on the part oi 
the slaves. This was ruinous to the landlords, as they were 
held responsible for the taxes, and dangerous to the wel- 
fare of the state, so for centuries numerous edicts were 
issued punishing with the severest penalties the desertion 
from the land.” 


The coloni thus legally bound ence a the old 
slave-coloni. Among the laws of Constantine there is no 


evidence that freemen were treated likewise. ‘The first law 
which showed that men of free personal condition were 
attached to the soil was a constitution of Valentinian J and 
Valens of 366 A. D., which said that fugitive coloni and 
inguilini, whatever their personal condition, (sine ullo con- 
dictonis discrimine) should be returned to the estates from 
which they had fled.* In later laws this class of coloni were 
expressly called liberi.* The next problem then for Rod- 
bertus to explain was the origin of the free coloni, the prob- 
lem which heretofore had occupied the almost exclusive 
attention of former students of the colonate. However, 
with the slave colonate already formed, the development of 


} Rodbertus, op. cit., pp. 240-241. 

2 Ibid., pp. 241-242. 

> Cod. Just., xi, 48, 6. 

for Lod. Just., xi, 48, 19; xi, 53, 13 xi, 60, I. 


112 THE ROMAN COLONATE [rr 


a similar free status was not difficult to explain. The 
earliest source of free coloni, he held, was the emancipation 
of slave coloni already legally bound to the soil. Their 
emancipation did not affect their adscription to the soil, but 
merely their personal status. They obtained the rights of 
freemen in relation to their master, who now became merely 
their patron and landlord, but their obligation to the govern- 
ment to remain as cultivators of the land remained un- 
changed. In 382 A.D. beggars and vagabonds* and in 
409 A. D. the conquered barbarian tribe of the Scyrae * were 
added to the class of free coloni. finally Anastasius (491- 
518 A. D.) ruled that all slave-coloni who remained on the 
same estate for thirty years should become free coloni.* 
In this way, Rodbertus concluded, the free colonate, at- 
tached to the soil, developed after the model of the earlier 
slave colonate, which had previously been legally established.’ 

The theory of Rodbertus differed strikingly from all 
those that had gone before. Most of his predecessors be- 
lieved that the colonate had originated in the provinces, while 
Rodbertus found it in Italy; most of the earlier writers had 


1 Rodbertus, op. cit., p. 258. 

2 Cod. Theod., xiv, 18, I. 

> Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4), 3. 

* Cod. Just., xi, 48, 19. “Agricolarum alii adscripticii sunt, quorum 
peculia ad dominos pertinent, alii triginta annorum tempore coloni fiunt 
liberi tamen cum rebus suis manent.” Rodbertus’ explanation of this 
passage is extremely forced. (Rodbertus, of. cit., p. 262.) It rests on 
conceiving agricolae as slaves and in reading liberi with fiunt instead of 
manent which enables him to translate this passage as “others of the 
slave peasants through a prescription of thirty years are made free 
coloni.” But the word agricola has no connotation in regard to personal 
status and to read Jiberi with fiunt instead of manent not only makes the 
last clause meaningless but destroys the contrast which the law makes 
between the adscripticiit, whose peculia belong to their lords, and the 
coloni, who own their own property. For the generally accepted trans- 
lation of this law see above page 90. 


5 Op. cit., p. 264. 


113] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 113 


regarded the coloni as transformed freemen, while Rodbertus 
held that they were transformed slaves; and no one before 
had related the origin of the colonate to general laws of 
economic development. Despite its many errors and weak- 
nesses the theory of Rodbertus is remarkably well-rounded 
and plausible. The difficulty which Revillout and Serrigny 
had found in proving that there was a class of free peasants 
large enough to form the basis of the colonate, Rodbertus 
avoided by tracing the colonate to slaves, the enormous 
number of whom at the beginning of the Empire was attested 
by numerous records of undoubted authenticity, Puchta, 
like Rodbertus, had derived the colonate from an origin in 
slavery, but his theory had given way because of the lack 
of evidence of legislation permitting a manumission of 
slaves as coloni instead of ordinary freedmen who had rights 
of freedom of movement. But Rodbertus held such legis- 
lation unnecessary, as the colonate in his opinion was simply 
the adscription of the slave to the soil. Once bound to the 
soil the slave-colonus might indeed be freed to become a 
free colonus, but the old manumission laws were perfectly 
capable of legalizing such an emancipation. Finally, like 
his predecessors of the administrative pressure school, Rod- 
bertus believed that the legislation of the colonate came 
about through the exigencies of taxation and through the 
need of stabilization in an era of universal disintegration; 
and this arbitrary treatment of the agricultural population 
was made so much the easier by the fact that the peasants 
were slaves and not freemen. 

The economic historian has frequently been criticised for 
his neglect of historical texts in his search for broad his- 
torical generalizations; and this criticism is particularly ap- 
plicable to Rodbertus.* The theory of Rodbertus rests al- 


1Cf, Westermann, “On the Sources and Methods of Research in 
Economic History,” Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxvii (1922), p. 70. 


114 THE ROMAN COLONATE [114 


together on two assumptions, first, that there was a change 
from large-scale to small-scale agriculture in Italy which 
caused the slave gang to be supplanted by the small tenant; 
and, secondly, that these small tenants, or “‘ colom” as they 
were called, were slaves. If these assumptions are false, the 
whole superstructure, which Rodbertus reared on them as a 
base, falls to the ground. ‘There can be no doubt that the 
second assumption is absolutely incorrect, for the word 
colonus from the earliest times to the age of Justinian was 
never used to indicate a slave. The jurists of the second and 
third centuries represented the colonus as a tenant who held 
a time lease and paid a money rent * and who was absolutely 
free to leave his leasehold at the expiration of his contract.’ 
Against the multitude of references which show that the 
colonus was a freeman, Rodbertus offered two texts which 
he claimed led to the opposite conclusion. Columella said 
that a proprietor should be more solicitous in requiring work 
than payments from his coloni,? and Pliny the Younger 
leased out his estate to coloni on share rent.* These refer- 
ences probably indicate that the condition of the tenant- 
colonus was not as independent in practice as the decisions 
in the Digest seem to imply. But it is ridiculous to deduce 
the conclusion that the colonus was a slave from these pas- 
sages in Columella and Pliny. Rodbertus, in addition, 
pointed out several decisions in the Digest which showed 
that slaves were used as tenants on the estates of their 


1 Cf. Dig., xix, 2,14. ‘Qui ad certum tempus conducit ... colonus est.” 
Dig., xix, 2, 24, 2. “Si...fundus in quinquennium pensionibus locatus 
sit, potest dominus, si deseruerit... fundi culturam colonus, vel inquilinus 
cum eis statim agere.”’ Dig., xix, 2, 25,6. ‘“‘ Colonus, qui ad numeratam 
pecuniam conduxit.” 

1 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 2. “‘ Quin liceat colono vel inquilino relinquere con- 
ductionem, nulla dubitatio est.” 


*Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “...avarius opus exigat, quam pensiones.” 
*Plin., Epist., ix, 37. “...si non nummo sed partibus locem.” 


TI5| THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 115 


masters. <A tenant-slave, however, was never called a colo- 
nus but rather he was spoken of as a ‘“‘ slave who was on the 
land like @ colonus,’* an expression which attests in the 
clearest possible way that colonus and servus were not synon- 
ymous. Puchta’s attempt to trace the colonate to an origin 
in slavery failed because of his inability to find any legisla- 
tion which legalized the transformation of slaves into coloni 
by a limited manumission. Rodbertus thought that the legis- 
lation of Constantine and his successors governing the ad- 
scription of the coloni to the soil was the legislation sought. 
But his explanation likewise failed because he could not 
satisfactorily identify the coloni, who were the subjects of 
the legislation, with the slaves whom he regarded as the 
basic material from which the colonate was formed.” 

The other assumption upon which the theory of Rod- 
bertus was based was that there had been a change from 
large-scale to small-scale agriculture in Italy in accordance 
to the law of Von Thiinen. This hypothesis was made the 
special point of attack by Heisterbergk, the next important 
writer to take up the problem of the colonate.* There is no 
direct documentary evidence, said Heisterbergk, that large- 
scale agriculture was supplanted by a small-scale intensive 
system, so the validity of Rodbertus’ assumption rests al- 
together on indirect indications of such a transformation. * 


1 Dig., xxxili, 7, 12, 3. “ Servus, qui quasi colonus in agro erat.” 

? Rodbertus’ identification of the adscripticit with slaves on mortgaged 
estates who could not be sold until the land was freed from mortgage is 
an interesting conjecture, but it is supported by no documentary evidence. 
In the Codes the adscripticii referred to slaves as well as coloni attached 
to the soil, so the term adscripticit, unlike colont, might very well have 
been applied to slaves. But the condition of the slaves on mortgaged 
estates was only a temporary one, lasting until the debt was paid or 
the mortgage foreclosed, so that even if this class had been a numerous 
one, which is not likely, it could have had little influence on the develop- 
ment of the later slave adscripticiate. 

° Die Entstehung des Colonats (Leipzig, 1876). 


*Ibid., p. 43. 


116 THE ROMAN COLONATE [116 


A change from an extensive system of agriculture to the 
intensive garden-culture of the central Von Thiinen circle 
would require a great increase in the number of the agri- 
cultural population. But numerous references point to the 
fact that the population of Italy, instead of increasing dur- 
ing the late Republic and the Empire, declined rapidly. 
From the time of the second Punic war Rome was engaged 
in a succession of wars, all of which cost her dearly in the 
lives of her citizens. Even more sanguinary were the fierce 
civil wars and the proscriptions which followed them. In 
125 B. C. Livy stated that there were 394,736 citizens * 
while the census of 46 B. C. showed that the number had 
been reduced to 150,000.* Likewise the policy of coloniz- 
ing foreign provinces with Italian settlers which had been 
instituted by Caius Gracchus further drained the population 
of the peninsula. Caesar complained of the “ fearful lack 
of population” * and during the Empire every inducement 
possible was given to encourage marriage and large families. 
But the population continued to decline and everywhere in 
[taly, cities became villages, lands were deserted, and it 
finally became necessary to import barbarians to settle and 
cultivate the waste lands. Hence these numerous records 
show that Italy was the least fitted of all lands in the Em- 
pire to assume the role of Von Thiinen’s innermost circle 
around the central city. The strength of the Italian popula- 
tion was utilized in the army and in foreign colonies to main- 
tain the Roman hegemony throughout the provinces, rather 
than intensive agriculture devoted to supplying the capital 
with food products.* 


1Liv., Epit., Ix. 

2\Liv., Epit., cxv. This census under Caesar is apparently discarded 
by competent scholars. Cf. Frank, Cl. Phil., vol. xix (1924), p. 334. 

>Dio., xliii, 25. ‘‘ dey dAcyavOpwria,’’ 

‘ Heisterbergk, of. cit., pp. 45-5I. 


117] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 117 


Rodbertus, it is true, believed that the serf-coloni were 
derived from slaves rather than freemen; but there had been 
a similar decline in the slave population of Italy. The 
savage slave revolts in the last century of the Republic and 
the massacre of the captives which followed their suppres- 
sion caused the death of thousands of slaves. With the 
beginning of the Empire and the new laws permitting in- 
formal manumission, slaves were freed in such great num- 
bers that legislation had to be passed to check it.* At the 
same time the cessation of wars of conquest which came 
with the Empire caused a marked decline in the new supplies 
of slaves. Consequently instead of the increase of slaves 
which would have been necessary to have made possible the 
change from intensive cultivation to the Parcellen-und-Gar- 
tenwirtschaft, all records point to a steady diminution of 
the slave population of Italy.? 

The second objection which Heisterbergk raised against 
the theory of Rodbertus was the inclusion of all Italy as the 
garden-land in the central circle of Von Thunen. In reality 
on account of the mountains and the slowness of land trans- 
portation several of the provinces could market their prod- 
ucts in Rome more easily than distant parts of Italy. Fresh 
figs could be obtained from Africa,* which would have been 
impossible from certain regions of Italy. Another weak- 
ness of this assumption of Rodbertus lay in his extraordinary 
exaggeration of the consuming power of the population of 
Rome. No city, ancient or modern, has ever been large 
enough to require an intensively cultivated market-garden 
area the size of Italy. No doubt certain districts close to 
Rome were devoted to market-gardens, notwithstanding the 


1Sueton., Octav., 40. 
? Heisterbergk, op. cit.,. pp. 52-54. 
*Piin., N. H., xv, 20. 


c18 THE ROMAN COLONATE [1 18 


known lack of fertility of Latium." But the population 
of this comparatively insignificant area devoted to market 
gardening was far too small to form the basis of the serf- 
colonate of the late Empire, at a time, too, when the capital 
was moved first to Nicomedia and later to Constantinople.’ 

But the principal weakness of the theory of Rodbertus 
lay in his failure to account for the development of the 
colonate in the provinces. The causes which Rodbertus be- 
fteved operated on the garden land in Italy to bring about 
small-scale agriculture and the colonate were not effective 
in the distant grain lands of the provinces, where extensive 
systems of agriculture were still maintained. Yet the Codes 
present direct and unmistakable evidence that the colonate 
existed in the provinces as well as in Italy. In fact, it 1s 
Heisterbergk’s central thesis that, contrary to the theory 
of Rodbertus, the colonate developed first in the provinces 
and only appeared in Italy when conditions there became 
similar to those in the provinces. 

Pliny’s often quoted statement, “ Jlatifundia perdidere 
[taliam,”’ was interpreted by Rodbertus to mean that the 
large-scale production of the latifundia had ruined Italy and 
resulted in a change from the extensive agriculture of slave 
gangs to the intensive agriculture of slave tenants.* But 
Heisterbergk claimed that what Pliny meant by his state- 
ment was not that the form of cultivation of the latifundia 
had ruined Italy, but rather that the latifundia were so large 
that they could not be cultivated by their owners and had 
been allowed to develop into enormous areas of deserted 
land. Columella complained of the same evil,* but the 
latifundia continued to develop as great pastures, hunting- 


1 Cf. Seneca, Epist. Moral., 87, 7. 
* Heisterbergk, op. cit., pp. 56-61. 
* Rodbertus, op. cit., p. 208. 

“De Re Rust., i, 3. 


II9] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 119 


lands, and parks. The motive for the organization of the 
latifundia was not an economic one and the size of a man’s 
estate was not limited, as Columella advised, by considera- 
tions of profit and efficient utilization. It was the pride, 
atrogance, and reckless extravagance of the newly rich which 
caused the thoughtless heaping up of possessions, until 
single men “ possessed the territories of whole nations which 
they could not traverse on horseback (in a day).’”* The 
enormous incomes of these landlords were obtained from the 
spoils of war and provincial administration or from lucrative 
contracts for farming taxes. Their Italian estates were 
used merely as means of display or as hunting preserves 
which neither necessity nor inclination caused them to put 
in cultivation.” 

In the provinces, likewise, there was the same concentra- 
tion of lands in the hands of a few possessors. In fact the 
latifundia were even more extensive there than in Italy. 
“ Six lords possessed the half of Africa when Nero killed 
them,” said Pliny.* Yet there was a fundamental difference 
between the formation of the lJatifundia in Italy and the 
provinces, which caused the former to be of a wholly un- 
economic character and led to the decay and ruin of Italian 
agriculture, while, in the latter, it maintained or brought 
about small-scale cultivation on the latifundia and eventually 
the colonate. This fundamental difference—which is the 
keystone of the theory of Heisterbergk—was the taxability 
(Steuerpfichtigkeit) or non-taxability of the land." 

In Italy up until the time of the Gracchan movement the 


1 fbid., loc. cit. “...possident fines gentium quos ne circumire equis 
quidem valent.” 

? Yeisterbergk, op. cit., pp. 64-68. 

* Plin., N. H., xviii, 7. “...sex domini semissem Africae possidebant, 
cum eos interfecit Nero.” 

* Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 68. 


“120 THE ROMAN COLONATE [120 


greater part of the land was ager publicus. For the use of 
this land a vectigal was at least nominally paid. The 
Gracchan proposals provided that the vectigal should be paid 
by the new possessors, but the tribune of the aristocratic 
party, in order to draw support away from the reform 
movement, proposed that land should be granted to settlers 
free from the vectigal. After the fall of Caius and the 
complete victory of the aristocratic party, in order to remove 
the danger of future agrarian reforms the ager publicus was 
wholly relieved of the obligation to pay the vectigal* and 
the Roman public domain became the private property of 
its former lessees. As the tributum civium, a general prop- 
erty tax,” had been abolished in 167 B. C., the Italian land 
paid neither taxes nor rents to the state from the time of 
the failure of the Gracchan reform to the introduction of 
the tributum provinciale into Italy by Diocletian. 

The exemption of Italian lands from taxation was fol- 
lowed by consequences far more important in the agricultural 
development of Italy than the hypothetical laws of Von 
Thiinen.* It removed the necessity for. serious cultivation 
of the land and at the same time greatly favored the growth 
of latifundia. As military service in the constant wars was 
keeping the small possessors away from their lands, it was 
comparatively easy for wealthy and influential Romans to 
absorb enormous tracts of land into single estates; and these 
were used for parks, hunting, and pasturage while the place 
of the ousted free cultivator was taken by the slave-herds- 
man or caretaker. In the provinces, on the other hand, a 
different condition obtained. Since the owner of provincial 
estates must pay heavy taxes, he could not afford to use his 
lands as pleasure estates or hunting grounds, but was com- 


1 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 27. 
7Cf. Seligman, Essays in Taxation, 9th ed., p. 35. 
3 Heisterbergk, op. cit., pp. 71-72. 


ber THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE I2I 


pelled to keep the land in cultivation, at least to the extent 
of providing a product sufficient to pay the provincial tribute 
and to support the population of the estate.’ 

In Italy the population of the latifundia was largely com- 
posed of slaves, but it is doubtful whether there were many 
slaves working on the provincial estates. Slaves were al- 
Ways in great demand at Rome, and, as the capital controlled 
the slave market, few slaves found their way to the provinces. 
Furthermore, since the provincial tribute became due im- 
mediately after the conquest, the owners of the estates could 
not wait to import a sufficient slave personnel to cultivate 
their lands, but found it most practicable to utilize the native 
peasantry as their tenants. So, while the development of 
latifundia on the tax-free land of Italy had meant the ex- 
propriation of the small possessor, on the taxable lands of 
the provinces, on the other hand, the development of Jati- 
fundia was only possible through the retention of the in- 
digenous agricultural population on the land as small ten- 
ants.” ) 

The provincial tenant farmers cultivating the lands of a 
Roman overlord were probably in a condition of consider- 
able dependence. They were not coloni, indeed, in the later 
sense of the word, but it needed only the immobilization 
resulting from centuries of custom and hereditary trans- 
mission (Vererbung) to crystallize their condition within 
the hard and fast limits of the serf-colonate.* Columella 
said that the great estates were cultivated by two classes, 
coloni and slaves.* The slaves were most advantageously 
used close to Rome, where the personal supervision of the 


1 Tbid., p. 79. 

2 Ibid., p. 80. 

> Tbid., p. 81. 

4Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “Hi vel coloni, vel servi sunt soluti aut 
vincti.” 


122 THE ROMAN COLONATE [122 


landlords was possible, while on distant grain lands—and 
here Heisterbergk believed that Columella was referring to 
the provinces—coloni were preferable.” In another place 
Columella again referred to the two classes who were to be 
found on the /atifundia as slaves and “ citizens in personal 
obligations”? (nexus civium).? These flatter must again 
have been the coloni in the provinces, Heisterbergk affirmed, 
and the word nevus (personal obligation) he believed showed 
that the coloni were in a condition of permanent dependence 
(ein dauerndes Abhangigkeitsverhaltmss).* The dependent 
condition of the peasants is shown in still another place in 
Columella, where the proprietor was advised to demand work 
more insistently than payments from his coloni, “ for this is 
both less offensive to them and in the long run is of greater 
advantage; for where the land is carefully cultivated it 
eenerally affords a profit and never a loss, so that the colonus 
does not dare to ask for an abatement of his rent.” * 


1Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “In longinquis tamen fundis...quum omne 
genus agri tolerabilius sit sub liberis colonis, quam sub villicis servis 
habere, tum praecipue frumentarium.” Cf. Heisterbergk, of. cit., p. 85. 


*Colum., De R. R., i, 3. “...occupatos nexu civium et ergastulis 
tenent.” 


3 Heisterbergk, of. cit., p. 82. Heisterbergk’s identification of those in 
the nexus civium with the provincial coloni is extremely questionable. 
If the provincial coloni were natives, as Heisterbergk assumes with 
reason, they were not cives in the time of Columella, a century and a 
half before Caracalla’s Edict, as indeed most of them would not be 
thereafter. Varro expressly defined the citizens in the nexus as debtors 
working out their debt. Cf. Varro, Lin. Lat., vii, 105. “ Liber qui suas 
operas in servitutem pro pectinia quam debet dat, dum solveret, nexus 
vocatur, ut ab aere obaeratus.” Both Columella and Varro were un- 
doubtedly referring to Italian conditions, and the very passage in Colu- 
mella (De Re Rust., i, 3) which Heisterbergk used here (p. 82) as a 
reference to conditions in the provinces he had cited earlier (p. 64) to 
illustrate the evils of the latifundia in Italy. 

*Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “Avarius opus exigat, quam pensiones, 
quoniam et minus id offendit et tamen in universum magis prodest; nam 
wubi sedulo colitur ager, plerumque compendium, nunquam detrimentum 
affert, eoque remissionem colonus petere non audet.” 


123] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 123 


Heisterbergk held that this passage illustrates the very con- 
siderable amount of oversight and control exercised by the 
landlord over his coloni; if the provincial peasants did not 
prove industrious and faithful tenants to their Roman over- 
lords, they might be driven from their ancestral homes, just 
as had taken place in the case of their fellow peasants in 
Italy.* 

The taxability of provincial land was the general cause 
which insured the cultivation of the land in the provinces. 
The next question, then, which Heisterbergk raised was the 
kind of taxation which would force proprietors to cultivate 
the land in the most careful way. In some provinces taxes 
were paid in kind and in others in money.” In provinces 
where the tax was paid in money it would be possible for a 
proprietor to use his provincial possessions as summer pleas- 
ure estates and pay the taxes out of his other resources. 
But if the tax were payable only in kind he would be com- 
pelled to keep the land in cultivation in order to furnish his 
assigned requisition. In'the grain provinces, where the kind 
and quantity of the product were both previously determined 
by the government, the proprietor had small choice in the 
matter. However little he might be inclined to agriculture, 
he must at least provide for a thorough enough cultivation 
of the land to satisfy the demands of Rome and to support 
the agricultural population. 

Hence it was in the grain provinces, particularly in Africa, 
Egypt, and Spain, that Heisterbergk believed that the colo- 
nate first developed.* The amounts of grain which these 


! Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 85. 

?Hyginus, De Limit. Const., p. 205, ed. Lachmann. “Agri vectigales 
multas habent constitutiones. In quibus provinciis fructus partem prae- 
stant certam, alii quintas, alii septimas, alii pecuniam, et hoc per soli 
aestimationem.” 


* Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 99. 


124 THE ROMAN COLONATE } 124 


provinces furnished to Rome were enormous. Josephus 
said that Africa provided the city population of Rome with 
enough grain for eight months and Egypt with enough for 
four;* Aurelius Victor stated that Egypt during the reign 
of Augustus furnished yearly 20,000,000 modu of grain; ° 
while Strabo related that Spain exported almost as much 
wheat as Africa.* There was no appreciable number of 
slaves in these provinces and there are no records of bar- 
barian settlements; therefore Heisterbergk concluded that 
the land must have been cultivated by the native peasantry.* 
The land of Africa, Spain and Egypt was very fertile and 
was able to support a very large population in addition to 
providing for the requisitions of the capital. In Byzacium, 
a fertile district of Africa, grain yielded a hundred and 
fifty-fold in the time of Pliny, while Leontium in Sicily, 
Baetica in Spain, and Egypt produced a hundred-fold.° 
Rodbertus’ conjecture that Italy was the original home of 
the colonate Heisterbergk had held impossible because it 
lacked sufficient population to make possible the change to 
small-scale agriculture. But the grain provinces were 
densely populated. Egypt, exclusive of Alexandria, had a 
population of 7,500,000 ° and had a birth rate as great as 
its death rate, a phenomenon which appeared marvelous to 
Pliny.” Frontinus in the first century * and Herodian in 


? Bel. Jud., ii, 16, 4. 

2 Epit., i, 6. 

* Strabo; ii; 2,16. Cf. Justinus, axity. 11. 

* Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 105. 

* Plin., NN. fi. yitt, 20, 

* Josephus, Bell. Jud., ii, 16, 4. 

7 Pliny, N. H., vii, 33. Cf. Simkhovitch, Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxi (1916), 
DD.) eae. 233. 

8 De Controv. Agror., p. 53, ed. Lachmann. ‘“ Habent autem in saltibus 
privati non exiguum populum plebeium, et vicos circa villam in modum 
munitionum.” 


125 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 125 


the third * both mention the large agricultural population of 
Africa. The peasants were spoken of as a populum plebeitwm 
who lived in villages around the lord’s villa, by Frontinus,” 
and a plebs rusticana by Julius Capitolinus,? expressions 
which indicate that they were a free tenantry dwelling on the 
enormous Jatifundia of the rich. “ But small-scale produc- 
tion on the latifundia, free condition, and actual strong 
dependence of the agricultural population applied to this 
work are the characteristics of the colonate.” * — 

The grain provinces were the real home of the colonate, 
but the colonate developed to a greater or less extent in all 
the provinces wherever the land was taxable. The taxability 
of the land was everywhere the fundamental cause creating 
the colonate, but the development of the colonate was con- 
siderably affected by the different treatment which different 
provinces received after the Roman conquest. In some 
provinces the Roman conquest made no important change 
in the economic condition of the peasantry, as Roman 
suzerainty meant little more than a change in the tax ad- 
ministration. In these provinces there was a continuity in 
the economic development of the province which was only 
slightly affected by the Roman conquest. In others, how- 
ever, the Roman conquest led to a complete change in owner- 
ship of the land, and, where the conquest was followed by 
a considerable Italian colonization, the condition of the 
agricultural population as well was materially modified; so 
that in these provinces there was a complete break between 
the earlier economic conditions and the later. 

Lvii, 4. ‘‘ dice: rodvavOpwroe obca f) AtBin woAdove eixe rove THY yi 
yewpyouvrac,”’ 

2 Frontinus, Joc. ctt. 

> Gord., 7. 

4 Heisterbergek, of. cit., p. 118. “ Kleinwirtschaftlicher Betrieb auf den 

Latifundien, freier Stand und thatsachliche strenge Abhangigkeit der 


zu diesem Betriebe verwendeten Landbevolkerung bilden aber die Merk- 
male des Colonats.” 


126 THE ROMAN COLONATE [126 


Egypt was an example of a province of the first type. 
The Roman conquest was merely a change of foreign over- 
lords, the Roman emperors, represented by the prefects, be- 
ing substituted for the Ptolemies. There were no Roman 
colonies, and economic conditions within the province were 
little affected by the change of masters. If the colonate 
existed in Egypt before the Roman conquest, as the refer- 
ences offered by Rudorff seem to imply, then it no doubt 
continued to exist after Egypt had become a Roman province. 
In this case the taxability of the Egyptian land, instead of 
creating the colonate, merely insured its continued existence.’ 
Africa, on the other hand, was an example of a province in 
which the economic conditions were fundamentally altered by 
the Roman conquest. Land was sold at auction or leased to 
contractors and numerous Roman colonies were established. 
The taxability of the African land in this case was the 
efficient cause which created the colonate, for even if a 
Carthaginian colonate had existed, it would have been al- 
together blotted out by the Roman conquest. Similar to 
Africa were Spain, Gaul, and Illyria, where numerous 
Roman colonies considerably altered earlier conditions on 
the land. The colonate here was a new creation after the 
conquest and not merely a survival of the previous condition 
of the peasantry. But in both types of provinces the taxa- 
bility of the land was “the permanent and indispensable 
condition’ (die feststehende und unerlassliche Bedingung) 
either for the maintenance of a previously existing semi- 
servile tenantry or else for the formation of a new class 
which finally developed into the colonate of the Codes.’ 

The actual adscription of the colonus to the soil came 
about through the legislation of the late Empire. During 


1 Jbid., pp. 123, 136. 
2 Tbid., p. 136. 


127 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 127 


the greater part of Roman history a strong distinction had 
been maintained between the Roman citizen and the provin- 
cial and between Italy and the provinces. But this distinc- 
tion was gradually weakened in the course of time by grants 
of citizenship to certain provincial districts and by the 
Edict of Caracalla in 212 A.D. The final equalization be- 
tween Italy and the provinces came with the introduction of 
the tributum provinciale into Italy by Diocletian. But the 
provincial colonate which had slowly evolved as a result of 
centuries of taxation in the provinces could not be created 
in Italy in a day merely by applying the provincial land tax. 
With the removal of the capital of the Empire to Constanti- 
nople, Egyptian grain was sent there instead of to Rome and 
African grain proved inadequate to supply the needs of 
Italy. It was necessary, therefore, that Italy develop her 
own agricultural population so that she might become as 
far as possible self-supporting. So the colonate legislation 
was formulated in order to create the colonate in Italy and 
to make the provincial colonate uniform throughout the 
Empire.” At the same time the enormously heavy taxation 
of the tetrarchy made such demands on the provinces that 
the tenant-colonate, which had been developed by the 
moderate taxation of the early Empire, threatened to break 
down through the wholesale desertion of the tenants. 
Hence it was necessary everywhere to tie the colonus to the 
soil and to enforce the adscription by repeated imperial 
edicts. In parts of the Empire where the land was still 
cultivated by slaves they were bound to the soil in exactly 
the same way as the coloni; and where the land had no 
cultivators at all, either slave or free, as in some parts of 
Italy where centuries of tax exemption had allowed the land 
to remain a waste or on the northern frontier constantly 


1 Thid., p. 143. 


128 _ THE ROMAN COLONATE [128 


ravaged by border warfare, barbarians were brought in and 
settled in the same condition.* 

The earlier writers of the administrative pressure school 
had presented an explanation of considerable plausibility for 
the adscription of the coloni to the soil; but their treatment 
of the sources from which the coloni sprung was decidedly 
inadequate. Rodbertus had attempted to remedy this defect 
and offered a theory which gave an apparently satisfactory 

explanation both of the origin of the colonate in Italy and 
- of the source of the coloni. But the theory of Rodbertus 
was based on such inadequate documentary foundation that 
it found little favor; and while it offered a possible ex- 
planation of the colonate in Italy, it did not account for the 
origin of the colonate in the provinces. Heisterbergk, 
however, in his outline of the development of the colonate, 
suggested as the source of the coloni a class in the population 
of the Empire which undoubtedly was adequate to serve as 
the basis for the colonate in the provinces. The agricul- 
tural population of the conquered lands incorporated into 
the Roman Empire as provinces was very large and the fact 
that they were Roman tributaries made it extremely prob- 
able that they were in a condition of considerable dependence 
in relation to their Roman overlords. Unfortunately, at the 
time that Heisterbergk wrote his essay very little was known 
about the economic condition of the provincial peasantry. 
The Latin writers whose works are extant today had passed 
over them in almost complete silence. Aside from a few in- 
conclusive references, like the Edict of Tiberius Julius Alex- 
ander, the only really valuable text was the passage in Fron- 
tinus which said that “ private proprietors had on their es- 
tates a numerous plebeian population, and villages about the 
villa in the manner of fortifications.” > The conclusions of 


1 Thid., p. 144. 

*Trontin., De Controv. Agror., p. 53, ed. Lachmann. “ Habent autem 
in saltibus privati non exiguum populum plebecium et vicos circa villam 
in modum munitionum.” . 


129] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 129 


Heisterbergk in regard to the provincial peasantry, therefore, 
were rather of the nature of clever conjectures than the 
interpretation of adequate source material, and contempo- 
raries might well have called them top-heavy. Hence it is 
all the more remarkable that soon after the publication of 
Heisterbergk’s treatise a series of inscriptions and papyri 
were discovered in the two leading grain provinces, Africa 
and Egypt, which in the main bore out Heisterbergk’s as- 
sumptions in regard to the condition of the cultivators of 
the provincial latifundia. 

- Much credit is due to Heisterbergk for the keenness of 
his vision in regard to the provinces; but as much cannot be 
said about his treatment of Italy, nor in favor of the cause 
which he thought brought about a strong contrast between 
Italy and the provinces in the development of the colonate. 
His assumption that a numerous dependent agricultural 
population existed on provincial latifundia was fully borne 
out by source material subsequently discovered. But the 
cause which he believed brought about this condition, the 
taxability of provincial land, is open to serious question; 
and when he was logically led to deny the existence of a 
small peasantry in Italy, because of the exemption of Italian 
lands from taxation, his conclusion proved absolutely false. 
There is not the slightest vestige of a doubt that coloni, as 
small tenant-farmers, existed in Italy during the early Em- 
pire. Columella devoted a chapter to the treatment of 
coloni,’ and Columella was writing for Italians, not for 
provincials.* Pliny the Younger’s estates in northern Italy 
had no chained slaves on them* but were cultivated by 
coloni;* and the Digest is filled with references to colont.* 


ee orann e It. F., 1; -7. 

* Tbid., i, praef. 

$Plin., Episi., iii, 19. 

“1 id., 1x, 37; x, 8. 

5 For the complete list of references to the coloni in Italy, see Bolkestein, 
De Colonatu Romano, pp. 96-111. 


130 THE ROMAN COLONATE [130 


Heisterbergk’s assertions that Italian latifundia were all 
pleasure estates is as much an overstatement as the assump- 
tion of Rodbertus that land in Italy was principally devoted 
to market-gardening. The exemption of the Italian land 
from taxation made it possible, indeed, for the wealthy 
classes to own large parks and hunting grounds, but it was 
also an inducement to thrifty landlords to make a profit out of 
land which did not have to pay out a large share of its prod- 
ucts as taxes. Such landlords were just as anxious to get 
tenants as the provincial magnates. The exemption from 
land taxes which Italy enjoyed had probably a considerably 
greater effect in favoring the growth of the small peasantry 
than preventing it, as Heisterbergk believed. 

The difference between the economic conditions in the 
Italian latifundia and those in the provinces was not nearly 
so great as Heisterbergk had maintained, and the taxability 
or non-taxability of the land was not the distinguishing 
characteristic; yet there is no doubt that a difference between 
the two did exist in the early Empire. It was not always 
easy to get tenants on the Italian lJatifundia, as Pliny the 
Younger had found,’ and vast stretches of Italian land lay” 
waste and deserted. The Italian population was steadily 
declining while in the grain provinces of Egypt and Africa 
the population held its own. The reason that it was more 
difficult to maintain a strong farmer class in Italy than in 
certain provinces was, as we shall see later, the fact that 
the land in Italy had become almost completely exhausted 
by the beginning of the Empire, while the provincial land 
still possessed a high degree of fertility. Rodbertus in his 
attempt to prove the market-garden character of Italian 
land made use of a statement of Columella which said that 
““ we are scarcely able to remember when grain yielded four- 


1 Epist., x, 8. 


131 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 131 


fold in the greater part of Italy.”* The conclusion that. 
Rodbertus drew from this statement was that only sterile 
land was used for grain, as all the better grades of land | 
were devoted to garden products.” But this observation of 
Columella, when interpreted in the light of numerous other 
contemporary references, shows rather that arable land m 
many parts of Italy had reached such a stage of exhaustion 
that it was becoming almost impossible to keep the Italian 
peasants on the soil.* Africa, Egypt, and Spain, however, 
were still unexhausted in the first century, and, although 
Pliny’s accounts of land yielding one hundred and one hun- 
dred and fifty-fold* were doubtless exaggerated, they indi- 
cate that at least as compared to Italy these provinces were 
very fertile and could keep their agricultural population on 
the land without difficulty. The difference between Italy 
and the provinces was a question of fertility, not of taxa- 
bility. Italian lands were deserted, despite the fact that they 
were tax-free, because they were too unproductive in many 
regions to enable a peasant to make a livelihood. The lands 
of the grain provinces, on the other hand, because of their 
fertility maintained a teeming population, even though they 
were compelled to ship to Rome a tribute amounting to one- 
tenth to one-fifth of their gross produce. 

The foundations of the theory of administrative pressure 
had been laid by Hegel and Wallon in 1847, and in the next 
thirty years it had been developed into a well-rounded theory 
by the writings of Revillout, Serrigny, Rodbertus, and 
Heisterbergk. In addition to these writers the theory was 


1Colum., iii, 3. “ Nam frumenta majore quidem parte Italiae quando 
cum quarto responderint, vix meminisse possumus.” 

2 Rodbertus, op. cit., p. 218. Cf. supra, p. 106. 

3 Cf. Simkhovitch, “ Rome’s Fall Reconsidered,’ Pol. Sci. Quart., xxx3 
(1916), pp. 211, 215. 

*Plin., N. H., xviii, 21. 


132 THE ROMAN COLONATE [132 


advocated in brief form by Kuhn and Garsonnet in the same 
period; and while no new material was presented in their 
writings, their statement of the theory is worthy of mention. 
To Kuhn * most of the discussion in regard to the origin of 
the colonate seemed beside the point. Many factors, he said, 
may have contributed to the historical development of the 
peasantry in the direction of serfdom in various parts of the 
realm, such as the settlement of barbarians in northern 
provinces. But for the Empire as a whole one factor alone 
was able to account for the origin of the serf-colonate as 
a universal institution, without the aid of any accessory con- 
ditions. That factor was the application of the total force 
of a despotic government to check the general disintegration 
which threatened all parts of the economic organization of 
society. Hence the universal immobilization of status, de- 
creed by Constantine and his successors, which affected the 
artisan in the city as much as the colonus in the country.” 
A few years later a splendid skeleton outline of a theory 
was presented by Garsonnet,’? but unfortunately he did not 
work it out in detail. In contrast to Kuhn’s belief that a 
single fact was adequate to explain the serf-colonate, Gar- 
sonnet held that three factors were necessary to understand 
it in regard to its origin and development. In the first 
place, it had always been the policy of the Empire to pro- 
vide for a regular and continuous cultivation of the land. 
In the second century the perpetual lease had been favored 
and in the late Empire great encouragements were given to 
the use of the emphyteutic lease, which was a contract pro- 
viding for the lease of land in perpetuity for a low rent with 


1“ Die stidtische und biirgerliche Verfassung des rémischen Reichs” 
(Leipzig, 1864), vol. i, pp. 257-270. 

2 Thid., p. 250. 

$ Histoire des locations perpétuelles (Paris, 1879), pp. 161-162, et passim. 


133] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 133 


the obligation that the land be kept in constant cultivation.’ 
In the second place, the fact that serfdom had already once 
existed in many of the countries which Rome had conquered 
made the transition to the late Roman colonate an easy one 
in these provinces; while in other provinces the transplanta- 
tion of barbarians in a semi-servile condition served as an 
entering wedge for the colonate. Finally, and most im- 
portant, was the legislation of the late Empire, which formed 
the colonate as an administrative institution in the interests 
of agriculture, the treasury, and the army “ destined to as- 
sure cultivators to the land, taxpayers to the treasury, and 
soldiers to the army.” ° By preventing the desertion of the 
fields this legislation checked the decline of agriculture which 
was making the land tax unproductive, and by attaching 
the colonus to an estate it made it easy for each proprietor 
to furnish the government with his necessary contingent of 
recruits. 

The writers of the administrative pressure school from 
Hegel and Wallon to Garsonnet had assigned several reasons 
for the colonate legislation. Wallon believed that Chris- 
tianity had had a humanizing influence upon the Christian 
emperors and had induced them to form the colonate as a 
means of protection for the oppressed poor. Revillout, 
Rodbertus, and Heisterbergk regarded the colonate as pri- 
marily the result of the reorganization of the tax system 
by Diocletian and his successors, while Hegel and Wallon 
mention this as one of the essential factors bringing about 
the colonate legislation. Hegel, Serrigny, and Kuhn looked 
upon the colonate as a means of checking the inner decay 
and progressive disintegration which had become pronounced 


1 Tbid., pp. 76, 161. 

2 Tbid., p. 161. “...une institution administrative... destinée a assurer 
des cultivateurs 4 la terre, des contribuables au fisc et des soldats a 
larmée.” 


134 THE ROMAN COLONATE [134 


in all parts of society during the third century; and finally 
Garsonnet held that the colonate was the means established 
for the three-fold purpose of maintaining the cultivation of 
the land, the payment of taxes, and the conscription of re- 
cruits. | 
Of these various explanations of the colonate legislation, 
the first, that it was due to the influence of Christianity, 
can hardly be considered seriously. The colonate was not 
an institution primarily formed in the interests of the wel- 
fare of the peasantry, as the numerous laws which had to 
be passed to prevent the flight of the coloni attest; while the 
only one of the late emperors who might be suspected of 
humanitarian principles was Julian the Apostate! The 
hypothesis of Revillout and his followers, however, that the 
colonate legislation was due to the necessities of tax collec- 
tion, stands on a somewhat firmer foundation. Taxes under 
Diocletian and his successors were unquestionably higher 
and more rigorously collected than in the third century. 
The oppressive taxes caused an increase in the desertion of 
the land on the part of tenants, as Lactantius observed,* and 
this desertion very probably seriously inconvenienced the 
decuriones who were responsible to the state for the collec- 
tion of the taxes. The adscription of the colonus to the 
soil undoubtedly made it far easier for the tax administra- 
tion to collect the poll tax and the annona, the tax in kind, 
just as it increased the facility with which recruits were ob- 
tained for the legions. But it is most improbable that the 
necessities of the tax administration alone were capable of 
accounting for the colonate legislation. Various forms of 
serfdom had existed in the ancient world in earlier times, 
but they had been imposed on an alien and conquered race 


‘Lactant, De Mort. Persecut., vii. “Ut enormitate indictionum con- 
sumptis viribus colonorum, desererentur agri et culturae verterentur in 
syivam.” 


135 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 135 


as a result of conquest. The Roman colonate legislation, 
however, made serfs out of free Roman citizens, in many 
cases the direct descendants of the Italian race which had 
conquered the world. It was a measure altogether out of 
harmony with the spirit of the Roman law, as it had been 
constructed through centuries of orderly development, and 
can only be adequately explained by being attributed to a 
cause which was sufficient to demand such a drastic remedy. 
Land was being deserted for centuries before the time of 
Diocletian; the higher taxes of the tetrarchy merely ac- 
celerated the tendency. At the close of the fourth century 
Arcadius and Honorius abolished the poll tax (capitatio 
humana) for the province of Thrace, but the coloni remained 
as before “servi tamen terrae cur nati sunt.’* In 371 
A. D., Valentinian in decreeing that the Illyrian peasants 
should not leave the estates which they were cultivating said 
that “they should serve the land not in the bonds of the 
tribute but in the name and title of colom.”* Finally with 
the fall of the western Empire the Roman tax system ceased 
to exist altogether, yet the colonate continued to survive but 
little changed up to the time of Charlemagne.* ‘The fact 
that the increase of taxes in the late Empire resulted in an 
immediate acceleration in the tendency to desert the fields 
points far more eloquently to the decadent condition of 
agriculture than to the height of the taxes. Where the soil 
is fertile the peasant of every age in history has been noted 
for the tenacity with which he has clung to his holding 
despite the most oppressive of taxes. But where the land 
has lost its fertility, any of a number of causes may induce 
him to leave in hope of making an easier living elsewhere.* 


“Cod. Just., Xi, 52, 1. 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 53, 1. “Inserviant terris non tributario nexu sed 
nomine et titulo colonorum.” 

>Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problémes d’lustoire, 
PP. 145 ef seq. 

* Cf. Simkhovitch, of. cit., p. 231. 


136 THE ROMAN COLONATE [136 


The thesis of Hegel, Serrigny, and Kuhn that the colonate, 
like the similar adscription of the industrial classes and 
administrative officials, was an attempt to check the general 
disintegration which was everywhere menacing Roman 
society, was far more satisfactory than the tax theory of 
Revillout and his followers. By conceiving that an intimate 
relation existed between the colonate legislation and the 
forces which were bringing about the decay and destruction 
of ancient civilization, this theory presented a cause which 
was fully adequate to account for even such an extreme 
measure as the transformation of the free Roman citizen 
into a serf. The only hope of a decaying world seemed to 
lie in a universal stratification of all classes of society. A 
choice had to be made between the continued life of the 
Empire and the ancient liberty of its citizens; and in such 
a choice liberty had to give way. But while Revillout, 
Rodbertus, and Heisterbergk had developed their theories 
in the fullest detail, the explanation of the colonate legisla- 
tion presented by Hegel, Serrigny, and Kuhn is little more 
than a bare statement. They do not discuss the causes 
which led to the decay of agriculture nor the way in which 
the colonate was bound up with them. Garsonnet offered 
a valuable suggestion in calling attention to the consistent 
policy of the Empire in maintaining the constant cultivation 
of the land by beneficiary legislation such as that favoring 
perpetual leases and emphyteusis.” But like the others, 
Garsonnet was primarily interested in other problems and 
did not carry his explanation of the origin of the colonate 
beyond the stage of a brief outline. 

The writers of the administrative pressure school were 
on the right path and were not far from offering a theory 
of the origin of the colonate which would not only account 
for the source of the coloni but would present an adequate 


1 Cf. supra, pp. 132-133. 


137 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 137 


explanation of the adscriptio glebae as well. But in 1879 
the first of a series of extremely valuable epigraphical dis- 
coveries was made in Africa. Later, inscriptions and 
papyri of almost equal value were unearthed in Asia Minor 
and Egypt. The attention of scholars of the next two gen- 
erations who took up the problem of the colonate was natur- 
ally diverted from the explanation of the colonate legislation 
to the analysis of the significance of these documents in 
relation to the historical development of the colonate in 
Africa, Asia Minor, and Egypt. The explanation of the 
adscription of the coloni to the soil—the crucial question in 
the problem of the colonate—has been left, if not untouched, 
at least but slightly developed from the time of Heisterbergk 
and Garsonnet.* 


1 Three other writers during this period offered explanations of the 
origin of the colonate. Terrat, in his Du colonat en droit romain 
(Versailles, 1872), criticized the theories of previous servile tenures, 
barbarian settlements, and limited manumission of slaves, and decided 
in favor of the theory of administrative pressure as developed by 
Revillout. (Terrat, op. cit., pp. 2-14, 84-103.) Marquardt, on the other 
hand, went back to the theory of barbarian settlements, and his dis- 
cussion of the origin of the colonate is little more than a condensation 
of the theory of Huschke, as he himself admitted. (Rémische Staats- 
verwaltung, Leipzig, 1876, ii, pp. 232-236.) His statement that “ ueber 
den Ursprung dieses Verhaltnisses (der Colonat) ...ist man nach mehr- 
fachen Irrthiimern zu folgender, jetzt anerkannter und als sicher zu 
betrachtender Ansicht gelangt” (7. e. the theory of Huschke, op. cit., 
p. 233), like John Stuart Mill’s similar assertion in regard to the theory 
of value, has frequently been quoted with great glee by later writers. 
The theory of barbarian settlements was likewise advocated by Arnold 
in his Roman System of Provincial Administration (London, 1879, 
pp. 160-64). 


CHAPTER V 


THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS AND THE COLONATE: 


I. 1879-1890 


{n 1879 a long inscription and two fragments were dis- 
covered in Northern Africa not far from ancient Carthage. 
They all date from the time of Commodus in the latter part 
of the second century, a period in which our sources of the 
agricultural history of the Roman Empire are particularly 
scanty. Much had been learned about agricultural condi- 
tions of the first century from the works of Columella, Fron- 
tinus, and the elder and younger Pliny, while the Digest 
referred almost altogether to the third century. Conse- 
quently the importance of these discoveries was immediately 
recognized and studies were made of the inscriptions in 
1880 by Mommsen?* and Esmein,? and in 1881 by Cagnat 
and Fernique,* and Mowat.* The inscription,® which was 
called the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis from the place of 
its discovery, was engraved on a large tablet in four columns, 
the first of which has almost completely been destroyed while 
the second is badly worn away. But enough remains to 
present an illuminating picture of the economic conditions 


1“ Decret des Commodus,” Hermes, xv (1880), pp. 385-411; 478-480. 

2“ Les colons du saltus Burunitanus,” Jounal des savants, 1880, pp. 
686-705. 

7“ La table de Souk-el-Khmis,” Revue archéologique, xli (1881), pp. 
94-103; 139-151. 

*“ Determination du consulat qui date la table de Henchir-Dakhla 
(Souk-el-Khmis),” Revue archéologique, xli (1881), pp. 285-201. 

5C. I. L., viii, 10570. 

138 {138 


I 


139] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 139 


| 


on the saltus Burunitanus, one of the emperor’s estates in 
, Africa. } 


Mommsen and Mowat have placed the date of the in- 
scription between 180 and 183 A. D.* Three types of 
people were mentioned in the inscription, procuratores, con- 
ductores, and coloni or rustici. The procuratores were im- 
perial functionaries who had charge of the administration 
of the emperor’s estates, one of whom resided on the saltus 
Burunitanus while others of superior grade were in Carthage, 
the capital of the province. The lessee of the imperial 
domain was designated by the normal legal word for lessee, 
conductor. In Italy, where the tenant farmers were ordi- 
narily the lessees of quite small tracts, the words conductor 
and colonus were practically synonymous; but in Africa, in 
the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis as well as in the inscrip- 
tions discovered subsequently, conductor always referred to 
a capitalist who leased the whole of a large estate. Fre- 
quently and probably habitually the conductor sublet a part 
of his estate to sub-tenants, and these sub-tenants who 
cultivated the land themselves were known as colon or 
rustict. 

The second column of the inscription begins in the midst 
of a petition which the coloni were addressing to the em- 
peror praying that he would redress their grievances. The 
coloni of the salius Burunitanus were obliged to pay to the 
conductor rent in shares * and certain special services.* The 
amount of operae was limited to six days a year, two days’ 


1 Column iv, 1-3 mentions “ (Imperator Ca)es(ar) M. Aurelius Com- 
modus An(toni)us Aug(ustus) Sarmat(icus) Germanicus Maximus.” 
Commodus became emperor in 180 A. D. and in the same year changed 
his first name from Lucius to Marcus. In 183 he assumed the title 
“ Pius” and in 184 “ Britannicus,” neither of which is contained in tl:e in- 
scription. Cf. Mommsen, of. cit., p. 391; Mowat, of. cit., pp. 285-289. 

C.J. L., viii, 10370, iii, 8, “. . . partes agrariae.” 

3 Tbid., iii, 8-9, “. . . operarum praebitio iugorumve.” 


140 THE ROMAN COLONATE [140 


plowing, two days’ hoeing, and two days’ harvesting* in 
accordance with a chapter of a hitherto unknown lex Had- 
riana, which the petitioners say they have quoted above,” 
evidently in the first column which has been obliterated. 
However, notwithstanding these specific regulations and the 
lex Hadriana itself, a “ perpetua forma’ engraved in 
bronze * almost all the conductores for many years had 
encroached on the rights of the coloni and forced them to 
perform more services than the law required, “contrary to 
justice and to the detriment of thy interest,’ as the colons 
say in their petition to the emperor.* 

In recent years conditions had grown considerably worse, 
for the present conductor, Allius Maximus, had been par- 
ticularly oppressive. The coloni had appealed constantly to 
the procurator, their natural protector and the functionary 
whose duty it was to see that imperial regulations were 
enforced, but to no avail. 


Not only has he paid no attention to our petitions, during the 
many years we have begged and supplicated him, supporting 
ourselves on thy divine warrant (subscriptio) ; but he has made 
himself finally even the accomplice of this same Allius Maximus, 
a conductor who is most influential, to the point of sending 
soldiers to the saltus Burunitanus; some of us he has ordered 
to be seized and tortured, others to be imprisoned, and some, 
even though they were Roman citizens, he has ordered to be 
beaten with rods and cudgels; and certainly our only fault lay 
in the fact that, since these burdens fell so heavily upon our 


1 Thid., iii, 11-13, ““. . . non amplius annuas quam binas aratorias, binas 
sartorias, binas messorias operas debea(mu)s.” 

* Ibid., ti, 4-5, “. . . kapite legis Hadrian(a)e, quod supra scriptum est.” 

3 Ibid., iii, 16. 

*Ibid., ii, 3-4, “... contra fas atq(ue) in pernic(ie)m rationum 


tuarum.” 


141] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS TAI 


feeble strength (mediocritas), we had sent an indignant letter 
to thy majesty, imploring thy aid.t : 

Grant us thy assistance since we are only humble peasants 
who make our living by the toil of our hands, and are not at all a 
match for a conductor who is most popular by reason of 
his lavish gifts, and who besides is well known to the pro- 
curatores, for he has obtained the lease several times in suc- 
cession. Have pity on us and deign to prescribe by sacred re- 
script that we be required to furnish no more than what we owe 
according to the lex Hadriana and the letters of the procuratores, 
that is six days a year, in order that we, thy native peasants and 
the foster children of thy saltus be no longer kept from the 
bounty of thy majesty by the conductores of the imperial 
domain.? 


On this occasion the coloni did not commit the mistake 
which they had made before of sending their petition to the 
procurator at Carthage, where the only result was the visi- 
tation of military troops and severe punishment for the 
temerity of their request. But they submitted their petition 
to a Lurius Lucullus, evidently a man high in favor in Rome, 
who presented it to the emperor; and Commodus granted 
their request. 


1 Tbid., ii, 5-20. “ Non solum cognoscere per tot retro annos, instantibus 
ac supplicantib(us) vestramq(ue) divinam subscriptionem adlegantibus 
nobis supersederit, v(e)rum etiam hoc eiusdem Alli Maximi (c)onduc- 
toris artibus gratiosissini (ul)timo in(dul)serit, ut missis militib(us in 
eun)dem saltum Burunitanum ali(os nos)trum adprehendi et vexari, 
ali(os vinc)iri, nonnullos cives etiam Ro(manos). .. virgis et fustibus 
effligi iusse(rit, scilic)et eo solo merito nostro, qu(od, venientes) in tam 
gravi pro modulo me(diocritati)s nostrae tamq(ue) manifesta (iniuria 
im)ploratum maiestatem tu(am, acerba e)pistula usi fuissemus.” 

2 Tbid., iii, 18-31. “ Subvenias et cu(m ho)mines (r)us(ti)c{i t)en- 
(ue)s manum nostrar(um ope)ris victum tolerantes conductor(i) pro- 
fusis la(r) gitionib(us) gratiosis(si)mo impares aput proc(uratores) tuos 
simu(s), quib(us pe)r vices succession(is) per condicionem conductionis 
notus est, miser(eari)s ac sacro rescripto (non) amplius praestare nos, 
quam ex lege Hadriana et ex litteras proc(uratorum) tuor(um) debemus, 
id est ter binas operas, praecipere digneris, ut beneficio maiestatis tuae 
rustici tui vernulae et alumni saltum tuorum n(on) ultr(a) a conductori- 
b(us) agror(um) fiscalium... (prohibeamur).” 


142 THE ROMAN COLONATE [142 


The Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus 
Augustus Sarmaticus Germanicus Maximus to Lurius Lucullus 
and to whom it may concern: The procuratores shall see that in 
conformity with the regulations and my decision that no more 
than six days services be required and that nothing be demanded 
from you contrary to the perpetual regulation.’ 


The first of the two fragments, the inscription of Ain 
Zaga* was written on a tablet considerably smaller than 
the tablet of Souk-el-Khmis and so far as it is decipherable 
it is identical with the first five lines of the fourth column 
of the longer inscription.» This tablet was found about 
nineteen miles from the spot where the inscription of Souk- 
el-Khmis had been placed, thus indicating either that the 
saltus Burumtanus was very large and copies of the decree 
of Commodus were located at various places in the domain, 
or that the emperor's rescript applied to a group of imperial 
domains where conditions similar to those on the salius Bur- _ 
umtanus obtained.* 

The other fragment, the inscription of Gazr-Mezuar,° is 
considerably longer than the inscription of Ain Zaga, but it 
is so badly mutilated that it offers only an occasional phrase 
which is intelligible. Like the other inscriptions, it belongs 
to the reign of Commodus, for it mentions the consuls of 
the year 181 A. D.° Like the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis, 


1 Ibid., iv, 1-8. “(Imperator Ca)es(ar) M. Aurelius Commodus An- 
(toni)nus Aug(ustus) Sarmat(icus) Germanicus Maximus Lurio Lucullo 
et nomine aliorum. Proc(uratores) contemplatione discipulinae et insti- 
tuti mei ne plus quam ter binas operas curabunt, ne quit...contra per- 
petuam formam a vobis exigatur.” 

7C. 1. L., viil, 14451. 

3 Cf. supra. 

* Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problémes d'histoire, 
p. 36, note 3; Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1894), p. 206. 

$C. J. L., viii, 14428. 

6 Ibid., A, 16, “ (datum Romae Imp. Caes. M. Aurelio Commodo III et 
L, An) tistio Burro cos.” Cf. Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1894), p. 204. 


143] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 143 


this fragment seems to concern the appeal to the emperor of 
the coloni of another imperial saltws* and the answer of 
Commodus. The coloni are apparently so oppressed by the 
increased exactions of the conductor that they threaten to 
leave and return to their homes where they can live in free- 
dom ~* unless the emperor restores their rights? The latter 
part of the inscription is unquestionably the reply of the 
emperor.* The services of the coloni were limited to four 
days’ plowing, four days’ hoeing, and four days’ harvesting ° 
which it will be noted, is just twice the amount demanded 
from the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus. Shops for the 
use of the public were also mentioned, which possibly were 
to be provided by the conductor, if we can accept a restora- 
tion by Schmidt.° In another line the phrase “ straw in 
making bricks” * is intact and seems to imply that brick- 
making was one of the services required of the coloni.° 
Mommsen, the first writer to discuss these inscriptions, 
believed that they offered no clue to the solution of the prob- 
lem of the origin of the later serf-colonate,® but nevertheless 
he held that they were very valuable in correcting the as- 
sumptions of men like Rodbertus, “ who know too little of 


1 Tbid., A, 11. “ (Ro)gamus, domine, per salutem tuam succurras nobis 
Si veitet 
9 Ibid., A, 6, “ (domum re) vertamur, ubi libere movari possimus.” 
® Cf. Seeck, Zeitschrift fiir Social und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vi (1808), 


Pp. 330. 

4 See the form of the verb in A, 15, “. . . .et totidem praestare debetis.” 

5 [bid., A, 12, “. . . nt aratorias IIIJ, sartorias IIII, messicias IIL, et 
ot RT 

C.J. L. viii, 14428, A, 13-14, “... rum fructum, et tabernae, quae 
semper publicis usibus (inservivit .. . . vos praestare iubeo).’ 


1 Ibid., A, 8, “. . . paleam in lateribus ducendis et m. . 

8 Cf. Seeck, in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real Encyclopddie, iv, p. 490. 

* Mommsen, Hermes, xv (1880), p. 392. “‘ Von dem Leibeigenencolonat 
der spateren Zeit ist in unserer Urkunde, wie dies nach Zeit und Ort nicht 
anders zu erwarten war, keine Spur zu finden.” 


144 THE ROMAN COLONATE [144 


actual Roman conditions and too much of economic the- 
orems.”* The colonate, as a system of small tenants, he 
said, had always existed in Italy from the time of King 
Romulus to the time of King Humbert. The great devel- 
opment of slavery in the last centuries of the Republic dis- 
turbed the system, but there is no evidence that slavery 
caused a quantitative diminution of the tenant class either 
in Italy or in the provinces. The inscription of Souk-el- 
Khmis furnished unmistakable evidence of the existence in 
large numbers of free tenant-coloni on an imperial domain 
in Africa. 

How these tenant-coloni in Africa and Italy were trans- 
formed into serf-coloni is a problem concerning which 
Mommsen hesitated to express an opinion. “ There are few 
problems of equal difficulty,’ he said, “ for sources of gen- 
eral scope are altogether wanting, and the conclusions of 
induction are even more questionable in this sphere than 
elsewhere.” * The ranks of the tenant-coloni were con- 
stantly being augmented by the emancipation of the agri- 
cultural slaves and this must have increased somewhat the 
dependence of the relationship of the tenants to their land- 
lords. But, nevertheless, there was a wide gap between the 
condition of these client-tenants and the serf-coloni, bound 
forever to the soil. The latter condition was altogether un- 
Roman and may perhaps have been imported from without 
the Empire, as by the settlement of barbarian dedititit on 
Roman land.® 

Esmein, whose Colons du Saltus Burumtanus was pub- 


1 Tbid., p. 408, “ die von den realen rdmischen Verhaltnissen zu wenig und 
von national6konomischen Theoremen zu viel wissen.” 

*Ibid., p. 410. “Es giebt...wenig Probleme von gleicher Schwier- 
igkeit; denn allgemeine Zeugnisse fehlen ganz und Inductionsschliisse 
sind gerade auf diesem Gebiet mehr als anderswo bedenklich.” 


° Thid., pp. 410-411. 


145] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 145 


lished soon after Mommsen’s essay,’ differed considerably 
from Mommsen in the significance which he attached to the 
inscription of Souk-el-Khmis in its bearing upon the histor- 
ical development of the serf-colonate. He agreed with 
Mommsen that slavery, although it reached very great pro- 
portions in Italy, never wholly succeeded in displacing the 
free peasant.” The small proprietors in many instances lost 
their holdings, but frequently they and their children be- 
came tenant-coloni of the owners of the great latifundia. 
By the time of Columella an hereditary tenant class was 
developing. Columella said that “that estate was most 
fortunate which had coloni who were native to the place and 
which always retained them by long familiarity even from 
their cradles, as though they had been born upon their own 
hereditary possession.” * ‘But the coloni here mentioned by 
Columella were undoubtedly free, for they were being re- 
tained on the estate by persuasion rather than by force.* 
However, Esmein argued, in certain parts of the Empire 
there were coloni of a considerably more humble status than 
those mentioned by Columella. He agreed with Heister- 
bergk that the home of the serf-colonate was to be found in 
the provinces, although he believed that factors more 1m- 
portant than the taxability of provincial land were the cause 
of its origin. The serf-colonate, he stated, first developed 
on the great provincial estates, called saltus, such as saltus 
Burunitanus of the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis. These 
saltus were enormous in size, frequently being as large or 


1 Journal des savants, 1880, pp. 686-705. Also published in his Mélanges 
d’ histoire du droit romain (Paris, 1886), pp. 203-321. 


* Mélanges, p. 308. 
$Colum., De R. R.,i, 7. “ Felicissimum fundum esse, qui colonos indig- 


enas haberet, et tanquam in paterna possessione natos, jam inde a cuna- 
bulis longa familiaritate retineret.” 


*Esmein, op. ctt., p. 308. 


146 THE ROMAN COLONATE [146 


larger than the whole territories of municipalities.’ Each 
saltus was attached to the nearest city for the collection of 
its taxes, but in all other respects it was free from the 
authority of the city magistrates. The result of this con- 
dition was to make the will of the proprietors supreme on 
their domains.* The tribunals of the neighboring cities 
were not open to the cultivators of the saltus and in case 
they were treated unfairly their only recourse was to appeal 
to the governor of the province. But such appeals were of 
course exceedingly infrequent, for the peasants were only 
humble natives without influence, and Roman governors were 
not apt to pay much attention to their complaints. Like- 
wise, it must be remembered that in many Roman provinces 
the peasantry was already in a dependent condition when 
they were incorporated into the Roman Empire. In Egypt 
the state peasants, (Syudcir yewpyor) seemed to be in an ex- 
tremely low position like the modern Egyptian fellah; while 
it is not at all unlikely that the Carthaginians cultivated their 
estates by means of the indigenous peasantry attached to the 
soil as serfs.® 

If the inhabitants of the great private saltus were in a 
semi-servile condition it is probable, said Esmein, that the 
coloni of the imperial domains were still more dependent. 
The imperial procuratores represented the emperor on the 
estates and held the coloni very strictly under their control. 
One of the decisions in the Digest stated that “if the pro- 
curatores prohibit anyone from entering the imperial do- 
mains who might cause trouble or injury to the imperial 
coloni, that person must stay away; for so the Emperor Pius 


2 Frontinus, De controv. agror, p. 53, ed. Lachmann. “In Africa, ubi 
saltus non minores habent privati, quam res publicae territoria; quin immo 
multis saltus longe majores sunt territoriis.” 


2 Esmein, op. cit., pp. 309-310. 
>Esmein, op. cit., pp. 300, 309-312. 


147] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 147 


decreed in a rescript to Julius.”* If the procurator had 
the power to prohibit the entrance of undesirable persons on 
the imperial domains, it is very probable, Esmein maintained, 
that he also had the power to prevent the coloni from leav- 
ing. Other decisions in the Digest show that the imperial 
coloni were freed from municipal burdens and corvées as 
these interfered with their work on the fiscal domains; ? 
however, some municipal services might be performed if, 
in the opinion of the procurator, it could be done without 
materially affecting the returns of the estate to the Heli 
treasury.® 

The inscription of Souk-el-Khmis was War iculaely val- 
uable, Esmein held, in illustrating how the law as stated in 
the Digest actually was applied in practice. The inscription 
showed that the procuratores were able to enforce their 
authority over the discontented coloni even to the extent of 
sending troops from Carthage and punishing the malcon- 
tents.* Esmein disagreed entirely with Mommsen in the 
latter's belief that the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus were 
simple free farmers. The expression “ thy peasants, home- 
born slaves, and foster children” *® which the coloni used 
in their appeal to the emperor was certainly not the way 
free farmers would speak of themselves. Likewise the con- 
trast between the conductor and the coloni does not agree 
with Mommsen’s opinion. ‘We are only humble peas- 

1Dig., i, 19, 3, 1. “Si tamen, quasi tumultuosum vel injuriosum adversus 


colonos Caesaris prohibuerint (procuratores) in praedia Caesariana ac- 
cedere, abstinere debebit ; idque divus Pius Julio rescripsit.” 


2 Dig., L, 6, 5, 11. “Coloni quoque Caesaris a muneribus municipalibus 
liberantur, ut idoniores praediis fiscalibus habeantur.” 


* Dig., L, 1, 38, 1. .“ Item (Impp. Antoninus et Verus) rescripserunt, 
colonos praediorum fisci, muneribus fungi sine damno fisci oportere. 
Idque excutere praesidem adhibito procuratore debere.” 


4C. I. L., viii, 10570, ii, 11-16. 
5 Ibid., iii, 28-29, “. . . rustici tui vernulae et alumni.” 


148 THE ROMAN COLONATE [148 


ants,” the coloni say, “ who make our living by the toil of 
our hands, and are not at all a match for a conductor who 
is most popular by reason of his lavish gifts.”’* The con- 
ductor held a temporary lease * while apparently the coloni 
were hereditary tenants. They owed corvées * and evidently, 
before the lea Hadriana had been issued, the procuratores 
had been able to augment their rents and services, which pre- 
cludes the idea that the coloni held a lease. But the most 
noteworthy characteristic of the coloni was the perpetual 
nature of their tenure. Their rents and services were reg- 
ulated by a chapter of the lex Hadriana, drawn up over a 
half-century before, which they designated as a perpetua 
forma. Although they had been subject to a long and con- 
tinued oppression on the part of the conductores they had 
not left the estate nor did they threaten to do so in their 
petition to the emperor. Their only resource seemed to be 
to call on the good offices of Commodus himself to restore 
the terms of the lex Hadriana.* 

Esmein held that all these particulars indicated strongly 
that the coloni of the inscription were already in the condi- 
tion of the serf-coloni of the late Empire. The fact that 
the law, to which the coloni referred as that governing their 
obligations, was known as the lex Hadriana, led Esmein to 
believe that this was the lex a mayoribus constituta men- 
tioned in a constitution of Valentinian’ as the law which 


1 [bid., iii, 18-22. “ Homines rustici tenues manum nostrar(um ope)ris 
victum tolerantes conductor(i) profusis largitionib(us) gratiosis(si)mo 
impares .... simus.” 

3 Tbid., iii, 22-23, “. . . (pe)r vices succession(is) per condicionem con- 
ductionis notus est.” 

3 Tbid., iii, 8-9, “. . . operarum praebitionem iugorumve;” iii, II-13. 
“, . . binas aratorias, binas sartorias, binas messorias operas debeamus.” 


*Esmein, op. ctt., pp. 314-317. 
5 Cod. Just., xi, 51, 1. 


149 | AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 149 


had originally established the serf-colonate.” Huschke had 
already attempted to identify the law mentioned in this con- 
stitution with the census law of Augustus;* but his con- 
jecture was supported by no evidence direct or indirect. 
Giraud, a year earlier had suggested as the lex a majoribus 
constituta the Edictum perpetuum, a collection of the edicts 
of praetors, aediles, and provincial governors drawn up by 
Salvius Julianus under Hadrian in 131 A. D.2 Giraud had 
regarded his suggestion merely in the light of a conjecture 
as there was no evidence to support it. But Esmein be- 
lieved that the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis furnished the 
desired evidence. The lex Hadriana of the inscription, like 
Hadrian’s Edictum perpetuum, was a long and systemati- 
cally drawn up edict, for it was divided into chapters.* 
Esmein concluded, therefore, that the lex Hadriana was a 
part of Hadrian’s great codification of praetor’s edicts, and 
likewise the initial law which established the serf-colonate.° 

Mommsen, whose word was law in the realm of Roman 
history in 1880, had been too cautious in stating that no 
relation whatever was to be found between the condition of 
the coloni of the salius Burumtanus and the later serf- 
coloni. But Esmein went too far. The coloni of the in- 
scription had many characteristics in common with the serf- 
coloni, yet the distinctive feature of the serf-colonate, the 
adscription to the soil, was lacking. The colonit may have 
been kept on the estate by custom, personal attachment, or 
the lack of an opportunity to establish themselves elsewhere, 
but there is no reference in the inscription to any legal ob- 


1 Esmein, op. cit., p. 318. 

2 Huschke, Ueber den Census, p. 169. Cf, supra, p. 61. 

* Giraud, Essai sur Vhistoire du droit francais, p. 166. 
eee Lo, Vill, 10570, iii, 4-5, “. . . kapite legis Hadrianae.” 

5 Esmein, op. cit., pp. 319-320. 


160 THE ROMAN COLONATE [150 


ligation to remain on their holdings. In the contemporan- 
eous fragmentary inscription of Gazr-Mezuar the coloni 
threatened to return to their homes where they could dwell 
in freedom unless their request was granted,’ while, in 
African inscriptions discovered subsequently, mention was 
made of the desertion of land by coloni without any attempt 
on the part of the management of the estate to retain them 
by force.” The thesis of Esmein, then, that the lex Had- 
rtana was the lex a majoribus constituta which established 
the colonate cannot be accepted.* But the greater part of 
E'smein’s interpretation of the position of the coloni on the 
saltus Burunitanus has been adopted by his successors; and 
his theory that the colonate first developed on the great 
saltus, especially those belonging to the emperor, was re- 
ceived with considerable favor. 

In 1884 Le colonat romain of Fustel de Coulanges * was 
published which still remains today the most readable and 
comprehensive treatise on the colonate. Like Esmein, Fustel 
de Coulanges laid great stress on the inscription of Souk- 
ei-Khmis in the development of his theory; and by means 
of the new information now available in regard to the con- 
dition of the peasantry he felt that he could successfully 
challenge the theory that the colonate was an express crea- 
tion of the administration of the late Empire, a theory which 


1C I. L., viii, 14428, A, 6. “...(domun re) vertamur, ubi libere morari 
possimu(s).” 

2 Cf. infra, pp. 174, 181. 

*Esmein’s identification of the Jex Hadriana with the Edtctum perpetuwm 
likewise proved unacceptable. “ L’Edictum perpetuum n’est jamais ap- 
pele lex Hadriana, ni méme lex,” said Fustel de Coulanges. “ Ensuite 
PEdictum perpetuum, sur lequel nous avons tant de renseignements au 
Digeste, ne parait avoir rien contenu sur le colonat; s’il avait touche cette 
matiere, nous en aurions quelques trace au Digeste.” Recherches, p. 39, 
note I. 


* Recherches sur quelques problémes d'histoire, pp. 1-186. 


1st] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS ISI 


had been almost universally accepted since the time of 
Revillout, thirty years before. It is true, he said, that the 
serf-colonate as a legal institution appeared suddenly in a 
constitution of Constantine in 332 A. D.* But this con- 
stitution did not create the colonate but merely recognized 
its existence. No mention of a law which created the colo- 
nate has ever been found, nor do later texts ever attribute 
the establishment of the colonate to any emperor or legisla- 
tor. Instead, the documents of the fourth century refer to 
the colonate as a “very ancient” institution * “ established 
by our ancestors.” * Therefore, in order to trace the origin 
of the colonate, Fustel de Coulanges believed it was neces- 
sary to go to sources considerably earlier than the fourth 
century.* 

Coloni were frequently mentioned by the second and third 
century jurists of the Digest, but they were far different 
from the serf-coloni of the codes. Both colonus and the 
more technical term conductor (lessee) were used to indi- 
cate a tenant who held a short-term lease and paid a money 
rent. The coloni were under no obligation to remain on 
their tenancies after the expiration of their leases,° nor 
could they be retained by force.° However, in addition to 
these tenant-coloni holding a lease and paying a money rent, 
Fustel de Coulanges believed that at the time of the writers 
of the Digest another class of coloni was developing on the 


1 Cod. Theod., v, 17, I. 

* Cod. Just., xi, 63, 3, (383 A.D.) “. . . antiquissimos colonos.” 

3 Cod. Just., xi, 51,1. “ Cum lex a majoribus constituta colonos quodam 
aeternitatis jure detineat.” 

*Fustel de Coulanges, op. ctt., pp. 4-7. 

5 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 2. “ Quin liceat colono vel inquilino relinquere con- 
ductionem, nulla dubitatio est.” 

® Cod. Just., iv, 65, 11 (244 A.D.). “Invitos conductores seu heredes 
eorum post tempora locationis impleta non esse retinendos saepe rescriptum 
est.” 


152 THE ROMAN COLONATE [ise 


great estates which was not in such a free condition. These 
coloni were the colont partiarw, tenants who paid rent in 
shares. They were almost ignored by jurists because they 
did not hold a contract. But notwithstanding the fact that 
they were only mentioned once in the Digest, Fustel de 
Coulanges maintained that they were a very numerous class. * 

How did the colont partiaru originate? The only ex- 
ample we have of a transformation of tenants paying money 
rent to tenants paying rent in shares is contained in one of 
the letters of the younger Pliny.” Pliny was complaining - 
in this letter that he had considerable difficulty in obtaining 
rent from his tenants. He had remitted the rent several 
times but the only result was to heap up the arrears of his 
tenants to a total sum which he knew they would never be 
able to pay. Even more serious was the fact that the 
coloni, despairing of paying their debts, consumed or spoiled 
the whole product of the estate. In order to get something 
out of his estates, therefore, Pliny changed his system of 
tenure from money rent to share rent and his coloni ceased 
to be conductores and became coloni partiaru. The con- 
dition of the tenantry described in this letter of Pliny was 
by no means an uncommon one, Fustel de Coulanges main- 
tained. Pliny also spoke of the coloni in arrears on an 
estate of one of his neighbors,* while the Digest contains 
many references to estates bequeathed cum reliquis colono- 
rum.* ‘Columella referred to debtors cultivating the lati- 
fundia along with slaves® while Caesar mentioned debtor 
tenants in Gaul,® and Varro in Illyria, Asia, and Egypt, as 


1Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 13-14. 

2 Plin., Epist., 1x, 37. 

3 Epist., iii, 19. 

4Dig., Xxxiii, 7, passim. 

§ De R. R. i, 3, 12, “ occupatos nexu civium.” 
© De Bel. Gall., i, 4. 


153] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 153 


well as in Italy. Probably on all these estates where debtor 
tenants were to be found the same change was made from 
money rent to rent in shares which had taken place on the 
estate of Pliny.? | 

Two important consequences followed from this condi- 
tion. The tenant in debt was legally permitted to leave the 
domain but only on condition that he could obtain some one 
to furnish bail* for his arrears. Of course in actual prac- 
tice the debtor tenant had slight chance of finding a rich 
man who would offer security for him, so the real effect of 
this law was to bind the debtor to the estate until his debt 
was paid. In the second place, when the landlord had 
changed the tenure of his estate from a fixed money rent to 
a share rent, he at the same time withdrew the protection of 
the law from his tenants; for an agreement made by his 
tenants to pay rent in shares was not a contract recognized 
by the law. The result was that the landlord could impose 
any condition he pleased on his coloni partiaru. Pliny re- 
quired his share tenants to work under the supervision of 
his slave stewards,* while Catiline® and Domitius Aheno- 
barbus © used their coloni along with their freedmen and 
slaves as personal retainers in their campaigns. The coloni 
could not leave the estate on account of their debts, so they 
had no alternative but to submit to the will of their landlord. 
Thus the former free tenant had fallen through debt into a 
condition of dependence which he had little chance of chang- 
ing; and custom crystallized his position into a subjection 
almost perpetual.’ 


Perel ie 4,17. 
2 Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 15-20. 
> Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3, “. . . interposita cautione.” 


* Epist., ix, 37. 

5 Sallust., Catil., 59. 

* Caes. Bel Civ., i, 34 and 56. 

7Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., pp. 20-22. 


154 THE ROMAN COLONATE [154 


In Italy a dependent colonate was gradually being estab- 
lished through debt and the substitution of the non-contrac- 
tual share rent for the five-year lease with its money rent. 
In the provinces a similar dependent status was developing 
on the great saltus, particularly those belonging to the em- 
peror. In an analysis of the texts bearing upon the saltus, 
most of which had already been discussed by Heisterbergk 
and Esmein, Fustel de Coulanges came to the same conclu- 
sion, namely, that the cultivators of the fields were not 
slaves nor peasants fully free but a tenantry in a condition 
of considerable dependence.* In addition to texts pre- 
viously studied, Fustel de Coulanges called attention to a 
brief inscription which had been recently discovered in 
Africa in which the peasants, whom the inscription called 
coloni, “ restored a monument which had become dilapidated 
from age in honor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his 
children, and also built two arches at the order of the pro- 
vincial procurator, a freedman of the emperor.” * These 
coloni were not slaves, Fustel de Coulanges argued, for they 
erected the monument “at their own expense,” nor should 
they be regarded as a free peasantry for they were working 
“under the orders of the procurator.” 

But the document which illuminated all other sources and 
which gave the clearest picture of the condition of the peas- 
antry on a great provincial saltus was the inscription of 
Souk-el-Khmis. The conclusions drawn by Fustel de Cou- 
langes after a study of the inscription corresponded very 
closely to those already published by Esmein. The peasants 
on the estate were called colom but they had nothing in 


1 Tbid., pp. 25-32. 

*C. I. L., viii, 587. “ Pro salute imp. Caes. M. Aureli Antonini Aug. 
liberorumq(ue) eius, coloni saltus Massipiani aedificia vestustate con- 
lapsa s(ua) p(ecunia) r(efecerunt), item arcuus duos a s(olo) f(ecer- 
unt) iubente Provinciale Aug(usti) lib(erto) pro(curatore).” 





4155] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 156 


common with the tenant-coloni of the Digest except the 
name. The head-tenant or conductor held a short-term 
_ lease, but the coloni had no contract, for had they held one 
they would have mentioned the fact that it had been broken 
in their complaint to the emperor. Thus they resembled 
the colont partiarit of Italy not only because they paid rent 
in shares but also because their condition was not ruled by 
the law of contracts. Instead, their rights and obligations 
were governed by an imperial regulation known as the lex 
Hadriana, which was described in the inscription as a per- 
petua forma. Evidently, then, they were regarded as per- 
petual tenants. No law compelled them to remain on the 
estate but they were kept there by the strong bonds of cus- 
tom. No doubt their ancestors had entered the domain 
voluntarily, but after several generations they had come to 
look upon the land as an hereditary possession. ‘“ The more 
they lived there the more interest they had to continue to 
live there. The proprietor never thought of expelling them 
nor did they ever think of leaving. Thus the man gradually 
took root in the soil before the day when the law would 
attach him there. He became a voluntary colonus before 
becoming an obligatory one. Habit and interest began what 
the law was destined to complete.” * 

The main sources of the colonate were the tenants who 
were attached to the estates of their landlords by their debts, 
and those who, like the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus, 
were attached to the domain through habit and interest. 
During the second and third centuries the numbers of the 
coloni were considerably augmented by the transplantation 


1Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., p. 42. “Plus ils y vécurent, plus ils 
eurent intérét 4 continuer d’y vivre. Ni le propriétaire ne songea a les 
expulser, ni eux a quitter la terre... . Ainsi homme, peu a peu, prit 
racine au sol bien avant le jaur ot la loi devait l’y attacher. I! se fit 
colon volontaire avant d’étre colon obligé. L’habitude et l’intéret com- 
mencérent ce que la loi allait achever.” 


156 THE ROMAN COLONATE [156 


of northern barbarians within the Empire as coloni. In the 
third chapter of his treatise, Fustel de Coulanges discussed 
the texts on barbarian settlements already assembled by 
Zumpt and Huschke and came to much the same conclusion 
as the earlier writers in regard to the status of the dedititit. 
But while Zumpt and Huschke held that the barbarian colo- 
nate served as the model for the colonate of the Codes, 
Fustel de Coulanges maintained that the barbarians merely 
were settled in the condition in which the mass of the peas- 
antry had already fallen. In this way he avoided the ob- 
jections which had been urged against the theory of bar- 
barian settlements by Schultz, Kuhn and Heisterbergk, that 
the barbarians were too few in number and not widely 
enough extended to form the basis of the colonate. But 
although Fustel de Coulanges argued more eloquently than 
either Zumpt or Huschke that the barbarian dedititu were 
settled as serf-coloni, the barbarian settlements played only a 
subsidiary role in his theory. 

At the same time that a dependent tenant class was grad- 
ually being formed among the free peasantry, a similar 
development was taking place among the slaves. The old 
system of working an estate by slave gangs of ten (decuriae) 
was giving place everywhere in the second and third cen- 
turies to the later practice of assigning the slave a lot and 
giving him a share of the proceeds as a reward. The germ 
of the new system probably lay in granting the slave poor 
land as his peculiwm which had been done as early as the 
time of Varro. By the time of Alexander Severus, Ulpian 
could refer to a slave as a quasi colonus* and in the same 
reign we have the first mention of the adscripticius,? whom 
Fustel de Coulanges regarded as a slave with a servile tenure 


? Dig:, XxXiil, 7, 12, 3. 
2 Cod. Just., viii, 51, 1. 


157] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 157 


who had been inscribed in the census for his plot of fand.* 
In 327 Constantine decreed that the adscripticit could. not 
be sold out of the province’ and forty years later Valen- 
tinian I declared that they were bound forever to the land 
and could not be sold from the estate by their masters.® 
However, like Serrigny and Rodbertus, Fustel de Coulanges 
was careful to distinguish between the slave adscripticu and 
the serf-coloni. Servile tenures had no direct connection 
with the formation of the colonate, for slave adscriptici 
were distinguished from coloni not only in the time of 
Justinian in the sixth century but in the documents of the 
eighth and ninth centuries. Yet the servile tenure is im- 
portant in showing that the formation of the colonate was 
not an isolated fact but one which was accomplished with 
the development of another analogous institution, which 
must have had some indirect effect on it.* 

The colonate existed in actual practice in the second and 
third centuries; but it was not recognized by law until the 
fourth. The legal recognition of the colonate came through 
the registration of the coloni in the tax rolls of the census. 
The census had fallen into disuse during the half-century 
of anarchy which followed the death of Alexander Severus, 
but it was revived and vigorously applied by Diocletian in 
connection with his tax reforms. The exact nature of Dio- 
cletian’s changes in the tax administration has never been 
fully understood, because of the scanty and somewhat con- 
flicting source material at our disposal; but Fustel de Cou- 
langes presented the following interpretation. The latifun- 
dium was the typical estate of the late Empire, he said, but 


1 Op. cit., pp. 62-63. 

* Cod. Theod., xi, 3, 2. 

> Cod. Just., xi, 48, 7. 

* Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 54-69. 


158 THE ROMAN COLONATE [158 


it was very difficult to evaluate for the purposes of taxation 
because it was so large that it was composed of land of very 
different quality. Some of the land was fertile and some 
sterile; some fields were devoted to arable crops and vine- 
yards, while others were pastures, forests, or waste; and 
usually only a part of the land was utilized by the pro- 
prietor. If the land did not yield a product it was exempt 
from taxation according to the earlier tax laws* and during 
the late Empire there were many disputes between the gov- 
ernment and the proprietors in regard to these exemptions.* 
It was almost impossible to determine the value of the differ- 
ent grades of land and to decide what land could claim 
exemption and what land was properly taxable. Hence the 
most practicable basis for the assessment of the land tax was 
the number of people employed in cultivation, Fustel de 
Coulanges believed.* The unit of taxation was the caput, 
or able-bodied cultivator. Whether he was a slave or a free- 
man made no difference so far as the assessment of the land 
tax was concerned. Women were rated at one-half * and 
children and old men were not counted at all. The coloni 
were registered in the census, therefore, for the purpose of 
determining the number of taxable capita in the Empire.* 
The registration of the coloni in the census was probably 
not applied universally at one time, for an edict establishing 
the practice has never been found nor was it ever mentioned 
in later documents. It is possible that it was applied in 
first one province and another until all throughout the Em- 


PG th oeea 

? Cod. Theod., xi, 28, 12, “. . . desertorum nomine querela;” cf. Cod. 
Theod., xiii, 11, 4 and 15. 

* Op. cit., p. 79. 

* Cod. Just., xi, 48, 10. 

* Lactantius, De Mort. Persecut., 23. 

© Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., pp. 75-81. 


159] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 159 


pire censitt, censibus adscripti, adscripticii, censibus inserti, 
and tributarii became common designations for coloni. In 
fact the registration in the census may have passed almost 
unnoticed at the time but indirectly it had an important 
consequence. ‘The coloni were dependent tenants before the 
registration in the census, but their condition had never been 
recognized by law and they were not legally prevented from 
leaving their landlord’s estate if they wished. But once 
they were registered on the tax rolls for a certain piece of 
land they could not leave it. Adscriptus censibus became 
equivalent to praedio adscriptus.' “ The registration in the 
census did not create a single colonus because the man had 
already become a colonus before he was registered in the 
census as such; but it was the first certain title which had 
officially designated their condition; and it was also the first 
point of contact which the coloni had with the government.” * 

Although there were many constitutions dealing with the 
coloni in the Codes, a law establishing the colonate has never 
been found; and it is doubtful if such a law ever existed. 
But after the registration of the coloni in the census by 
Diocletian the problem soon arose as to the procedure which 
should be followed in case a colonus deserted a piece of 
Jand for which he had been registered. Such a desertion 
would cause confusion in the tax rolls, so it was declared 
illegal and the proprietor who had received the deserter as 
his tenant was compelled to pay his back capitation tax.® 


1 Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 26. 


2Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 85-86. “ L’inscription au cens ne créa 
pas un seul colon par la raison que l’homme était déja colon avant d'etre 
comme tel inscrit au cens; ... mais elle a été le premier titre certain 
qui ait marqué officiellement leur condition; et elle a été aussi le pre- 
mier point de contact que les colons aient eu avec le gouvernement im- 
péerial.” 

> Cod. Theod., v, 17, 1. “Apud quemcumque colonus iuris alieni fuerit 
inventus, is non solum eundem origini suae restituat, verum super eodem 
capitationem temporis agnoscat.” 


160 THE ROMAN COLONATE [160 


Thus the colonate legislation of the late Empire was not 
drawn up in order to create a serf class but merely to regu- 
late the administration of the capitation tax. The colonate 
had existed as an economic institution for three centuries; 
the legislation in the Codes merely gave it fornfal legal 
recognition.* 

The theory of Fustel de Coulanges was received with the 
ereatest favor in France. It was followed very closely in 
1888 by both Willems * and Rérolle* in their explanations 
of the origin of the colonate; and in 1892, in a new work,* 
Esmein modified the theory which he had advanced in 1880 
to bring it in closer harmony with that of Fustel de Cou- 
langes.° In a more extended work, Glasson ® after review- 
ing previous theories of the colonate found that his views 
were in closest accord with the theory of Fustel de Coulanges. 
The main source of the coloni, he maintained, was the peas- 
antry on the great domains like the saltus Burunitanus. 
From the time of the first formation of the latifundia in 
Italy he believed that a large class of humble dependents 
was to be found as tillers of the soil on these great estates. 
They did not hold contracts, but were governed by general 
regulations similar to the lex Hadriana of the saltus Buruni- 
tanus. With the establishment of the Empire probably the 


1Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., pp. 87-91, 97, 185. 

2 Droit public romain (Paris, 1888), pp. 616-619. 

* Le colonage partiaire (Lyons, 1888), pp. 54-59, 76-83. 

* Histotre du droit francais (Paris, 1892), pp. 22-25. 

* It is interesting to note that the most recent work in France on the 
colonate is based altogether on the theory of Fustel de Coulanges. Cf. 
Leclercq in the Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de ltturgie 
(Paris, 1914), art. “ Colonat,” vol. iii, pp. 2235-2266. It was also fol- 
lowed by Cunningham in his Western Civilization (Cambridge, 1898), 
vol. i, pp. 190-191. 

® Histoire du droit et des institutions de la France (Paris, 1887), vol. 
i, pp. 458-495. 


161] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 161 


number of tenants with leases increased in the vicinity of 
Rome, but these were only the tenants in better circum- 
stances. The large pauper class of the Empire could only 
obtain tenancies on the land by accepting the more rigorous 
terms offered by the proprietors of the great saltus, where 
they cultivated the soil without individual contracts, just as 
the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus. At the same time the 
slaves on the latifundia were granted servile tenures and 
barbarians were settled on Roman domains in the same con- 
dition as the native coloni. Finally, as Fustel de Coulanges 
had pointed out, the registration of the coloni in the census 
brought about not the creation but merely the legal recog- 
nition of the colonate.* 

Glasson, although he agreed with Fustel de Coulanges in 
most of the details of his theory, took issue with him 
strongly in regard to the first source of the coloni which the 
latter had mentioned, namely the share tenants whom Fustel 
de Coulanges claimed had lost their leases and were bound 
to the soil by their debts; and the objections of Glasson have 
in general been sustained by subsequent writers.* The share 
colonate was not an extra-legal institution as Fustel de Cou- 
langes maintained, but it was specifically recognized by 
Gaius in a decision in the Digest.* The partiarius colonus 
was as much a regularly constituted lessee as the colonus qut 
ad pecuniam numeratam condusitt. Payments in kind were 
likewise recognized by jurists as coming under contractual 


1 Ibid., pp. 493-495. 

2 Cf. Dareste, Journal des savants (1886), p. 517; Humbert, La grande 
encyc., art. “ Colonat,” xi, p. 1055; Toutain, Nouv. rev. hist. du droit fr. 
(1897), pp. 414-415; Beaudouin, ibid., p. 692; Cuq, Mém. a lacad. des 
inscrip., xi, 1, pp. 117-121; Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, p. 109; 
Heitland, Agricola, p. 365. 

3 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. “ Apparet autem de eo nos colono dicere qui ad 
pecuniam numeratam conduxit; alioquin partiarius colonus, quasi so- 
cietatis jure, et damnum et lucrum cum domino fundi partitur.” 


162 THE ROMAN COLONATE [162 


relations.* In the second place, the hypothesis of Fustel de 
Coulanges that the indebted tenant could not leave his hold- 
ing unless he found some one to offer security for his debts ° 
was based on a misconception of the meaning of cawutto. 
Cautio as used by the Roman jurists meant not security in 
the sense of bail but a written acknowledgement of the debt.® 
Hence the argument which Fustel de Coulanges had ad- 
vanced that indebted tenants were bound to remain on their 
tenures because of their inability to find security for their 
debts, cannot be sustained. The tenant in debt undoubtedly 
held a humble position on the estate of his landlord, but he 
was not a serf. 

As we have shown before, there is not the slightest evi- 
dence that either the tenants on the great saltus* or the 
barbarian dedititu® were attached to the soil before the 
legislation of the Codes. They were no doubt in a position 
of considerable dependence as the inscription of Souk- 
el-Khmis had demonstrated, but there was a much greater 
difference between such a state and the hard-and-fast 
lines of the serf-colonate than Fustel de Coulanges and 
Glasson seemed to realize. No condition can be very op- 
pressive which one is free to leave at pleasure. But when 
a man was attached forever to a certain piece of land in 
bonds which affected not only himself but his children and 
descendants as well he was removed by an important step 
from the tenantry of the second and third centuries, poor 
and humble though they doubtless were. It was a trans- 


2 Inst, iit, 2412 Dt, CIR, 1S, eens 
“2 Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3. “‘Quaesitum est an reliqua colonorum, qui 
finita conductione, interposita cautione, de colonia discesserant.” 

*Glasson, op. cit., i, 491. Cf., especially Cuq, of. cit. p. 121 for 
references. 

4 Cf. supra, pp. 149-150. 

5 Cf. supra, pp. 74-91. 


163} AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 163 


formation entirely too radical and out of harmony with the 
whole development of the Roman law to be accounted for 
merely by Diocletian’s reforms in tax administration and the 
census. The entire Roman world was waning in vigor, 
and decay had set in everywhere. When industry, agricul- 
ture, the army, and the administrative bureaux seemed un- 
able to maintain themselves against the universal disintegra- 
tion, force was applied and every employment was made 
fixed and hereditary. The colonate legislation was funda- 
mentally concerned with maintaining the cultivation of the 
fields at any cost and punishing with increasing penalties the 
colonus who fled or the patron who received and sheltered 
him. The assumption of Fustel de Coulanges and Glasson 
that the attachment of the colonus to the soil was merely 
incidental to the registration of the coloni in the census for 
purpose of taxation is a total misplacement of emphasis. 
The coloni were being registered in the census during the 
reign of Alexander Severus (222-235 A. D.)* at a time 
when numerous texts in the Digest show that they were 
unquestionably free tenants. They continued to be attached 
to the soil long after the Roman tax system had disappeared. 
The government was indeed concerned with them incidently 
to see that they were properly inscribed in the tax rolls of 
their estates; but it was fundamentally concerned in main- 
taining their perpetual and hereditary adscription to the 
soil. 

The first effect of the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis had 
been to turn the attention of writers on the colonate away 
from the legislation of the fourth century. By studying 
the historical development of the tenant classes they at- 
tempted to account for the origin of the colonate inde- 
pendently of the administrative pressure of the imperial 


1Ulpian in Dig., L, 15, 4, 8 (De censibus). “Si quis inquilinum vel 
colonum non fuerit professus, vinculis censualibus tenetur.” 


164 THE ROMAN COLONATE [164 


government. Esmein had felt that the quasi-permanent and 
semi-servile conditions on the saltus Burunitanus might be 
the survival of a previous Carthaginian serfdom. Fustel de 
Coulanges had believed the permanence of their tenure was 
the result of custom which the peasants never thought of 
breaking. But could it be related to the same administrative 
pressure which later completed the process by attaching the 
coloni forever to the soil? This was the thesis of Henry 
Francis Pelham, who in 1890 presented a new theory of the 
colonate, the first contribution to be made by an English 
writer.” 

Heisterbergk had maintained that the original home of 
the colonate was in the provinces where the taxability of the 
land did not permit pleasure estates nor wasteful slave cul- 
ture as in Italy. Esmein found the original home of the 
coloni in the great saltus where the power of the proprietor 
was so great that it made him independent of local govern- 
ment and kept his tenants wholly in his subjection. Pelham 
likewise believed that the colonate first appeared on the latt- 
fundia, but originally those which belonged to the emperor. 
The coloni as described in the Digest bore little similarity 
to the serf-coloni of the Codes. The first certain reference 
to a system of tenure essentially like that of the serf-colonate 
is to be found on the saltus Burunitanus, which was an 
imperial domain. It is easy to see, said Pelham, how a 
custom in force on the estates of the crown might become 
general throughout the whole Empire and eventually be in- 
corporated in the law of the land. The imperial estates ex- 
isted in all parts of the world and comprised a substantial 
part of all provincial land.* More important even than the 

1 The Imperial Domains and the Colonate (London, 1890). Also in his 


Essays on Roman History (Oxford, 1911), pp. 275-299, to which we 
refer. 


*Pelham, op. cit., pp. 278, 282. Cf. Garsonnet, Locations perpétuelles, 
pp. 148-149. 


165] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 165 


ubiquity of the domains was the unity of their management 
from generation to generation. A: perpetua forma such as 
that in force on the salius Burunitanus could hardly have 
developed on private estates which frequently changed hands, 
especially since a perpetual tenure such as this was not recog- 
nized by law. So far as the imperial coloni themselves were 
concerned they found themselves the most favored of the 
small farmer class. They were largely exempt from munici- 
pal burdens * and were under the especial protection and care 
of the imperial administrators. But if they still legally had 
the right of leaving their holdings, there is no doubt that any 
general migration of coloni would have been strongly dis: 
couraged by the imperial authorities.? 

The only full description of the position of the coloni on 
an imperial domain is to be found in the inscription of Souk- 
el-Khmis.* But other brief descriptions, which were being 

found yearly in Africa, mention coloni on other imperial 
estates in Africa evidently in a condition similar to that of 
the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus.* Also the recent dis- 
covery of a series of inscriptions in Asia Minor, dating from 
218 A. D., revealed the existence of a large imperial domain 
in south-eastern Phrygia which seemed to be organized in 
much the same way as the saltus Burumtanus. At least the 
inscriptions mention a working population (8jpos “OpuyAéwv), 
an imperial procurator (‘exitporos) and conductores (wo8wrat). 
The “people of the Ormeleis” were grouped into three 
villages, each of which had a headman (zpodywv) who cor- 
responded to the magister of the coloni of the saltus Burun- 
tanus.° Pelham concluded, therefore, that the condition of 


1Cf. supra, p. 147. 

? Pelham, Op. cit., pp. 277-282, 292. 

3 Tbid., pp. 282-287. 

Mer, Ci 1. L., viii, 587; 8701; 8702; 8777. 

5C. I. L., viii, 10570; iv, 25-29. “Feliciter consummata et dedicata 


166 THE ROMAN COLONATE [166 


the coloni on the saltus Burunitanus was typical of the con- 
dition of the coloni everywhere on the imperial domains 
throughout the Empire.* 

What was the origin of the type of tenure which existed 
on these imperial domains? The Digest contains only a 
little information about the coloni Caesaris for it is mainly 
concerned with the coloni of an entirely different type, who 
held a short-term lease and paid a money rent. But in the 
Liber Coloniarum.? Pelham believed that more valuable in- 
formation could be obtained. In this work several refer- 
ences were made to the settlement of coloni by Vespasian, 
Trajan, and Hadrian in Campania in a manner which Pel- 
ham maintained was different both from the old method of 
Roman colonization and the terminable lease described in 
the Digest. The coloni were designated as colom wnpera- 
toris, coloni sui, or coloni eorum (imperatorum) and the 
lands upon which they were settled were apparently imperial 
domains.* It is significant also that these settlements were 
made by Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian, “ those emperors 
to whom was due an heroic and partially successful effort 
to replace the extravagance of the Neronian age by careful 
economy and to husband and develop resources which recent 
experience had shown to be no longer inexhaustible.” * The 
imperial domains were surveyed and reorganized under a 


...cura agente C. Julio...ope Salaputi magistro.” For the text of the 
Ormelian inscriptions see Sterrett, An Epigraphical Journey in Asia 
Minor (Boston, 1888), pp. 48-57. 

1 Op. cit., pp. 287-289. 

2 Included in Lachmann’s edition of Gromatici veteres, vol. 1. 


3 Gromatici veteres, i, p. 230. “Coloni vel familia imperatoris Ves- 
pasiani iussu eius acceperunt,” p. 236, “ Colonis et familiae (Vespasiani) 
est adiudicatus (ager);” p. 235, “Imp. Hadrianus colonis suis agrum 
adsignari iussit”; p. 236, “Ab imperatoribus Vespasiano, Traiano et 
Hadriano...colonis eorum adsignatus.” 


* Pelham, of: cit., p. 290. 





167] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 167 


system of procuratores and intense efforts were made to 
maintain cultivation and check the desertion of the fields. 
The lands were leased to large capitalist lessees, or conduc- 
tores, as on the saltus Burumtanus, while the labor force 
was comprised of coloni, who sublet the land from the con- 
ductores. ‘Slave labor was seldom utilized because it was 
both difficult to obtain and had already proved itself to be 
unprofitable. This system, inaugurated on the imperial 
domains of Campania, soon spread throughout the whole 
Empire and the first step in the direction of the serf-colonate 
was taken, that is the substitution of coloni holding their 
land according to the terms of perpetuae formae for tenants 
possessing the terminable leases described in the Digest. 
The coloni on the imperial domains might be natives or 
poor Italian emigrants. Later barbarians were settled on 
the imperial domains in substantially the same condition as 
the imperial coloni. In all cases liberty of movement must 
have been confined at least within the limits of certain dis- 
tricts, while the authority of the procurator over the coloni 
must have been unquestioned. Tihe condition of the colomi 
was not ruled by law, as set forth in the Digest, but by im- 
perial regulations which were coming to have more and more 
the force of law. The wide distribution of these domains 
gave this law a still more general character. But with the 
late Empire the increasing centralization of the government 
and the declining energy which was manifesting itself 
throughout all society brought about measures of more com- 
prehensive scope. The coloni everywhere were bound to 
the soil while the same hereditary adscription was applied 
to the gilds, the army, and the decurionate. But the later 
legislation was really nothing more than an extension of the 
economic policy of the earlier emperors, especially of 
Hadrian, in their attempt to maintain and develop agricul- 
ture on their own domains. The position of the colom 


168 THE ROMAN COLONATE [168 


Caesaris and the regulations in force governing the imperial 
domains served as the prototype for the colonate legislation 
of the late Empire.* 

Pelham added a real contribution to the explanation of 
the origin of the colonate by showing that there was an 
historical connection between the imperial policy on the fiscal 
domains of the second century and the colonate legislation 
of the Codes. Neither policy was primarily related to the 
more or less ephemeral changes in tax administration, as 
previous writers had urged, but both were caused by the 
fundamental necessity of checking decline in agricultural 
production and in conserving natural and human resources. 
Esmein and Glasson, and to a certain extent Fustel de Cou- 
langes, had emphasized the factor of oppression and illegal 
encroachments on the part of proprietors and imperial func- 
tionaries which they believed gradually brought about the 
immobilization of status of the peasantry. But the pater- 
nalistic policy of the wiser emperors, stressed by Pelham, 
was probably more important in leading to permanence of 
conditions on the domains than the element of oppression. 
The coloni on the saltus Burumtanus did not leave their 
holdings because, notwithstanding the encroachments of the 
conductores, they felt that they were in a more favorable 
position there than they would be if they should leave and 
try to establish themselves elsewhere. 

The weakest part of Pelham’s argument lay in the con- 
clusions which he drew from the settlements of Vespasian, 
Trajan, and Hadrian in Campania. ‘The texts are so brief 
that they offer no clue in regard to the condition of the 
coloni on these Italian domains of the crown. The expres- 
sions ‘‘ coloni imperatoris”’ or “ colont sui” are certainly no 
more illuminating than the similar expressions in regard to 


1 Pelham, op. cit., pp. 204-205. 


169 | AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 169 


the coloni of Catiline* or of Domitius Ahenobarbus * during 
the Republic. So far as most of the provinces were con- 
cerned Pelham was probably right in affirming that the con- 
ditions on the imperial domains were followed by the private 
possessor; for in most provinces the imperial domains in- 
cluded a very considerable proportion of the total land of 
the province. It Italy, however, the imperial domains were 
relatively much smaller and probably differed little from the 
private estates in their organization and development.* It 
is possible that the imperial domains were more carefully 
administered than the private estates and that an hereditary 
tenantry developed on them first. Yet it seems improbable 
that there was as great a distinction between the estates of 
the crown and those of private possessors as Pelham 
imagined. It is true that many private latifundia, especially 
in Italy, were pleasure estates,* yet the more far-sighted pro- 
prietors followed much the same policy as the imperial ad- 
ministration. An African inscription, discovered several 
years after Pelham’s essay appeared, shows that private 
domim attempted to keep a permanent peasant population on 
their land by inducements of all kinds.” Private proprietors 
no less than emperors were beginning to realize that the 
resources of the Empire were not inexhaustible ° and that 
a policy of conservation must be followed before it was too 
late. 

Yet a system of tenures under perpetuae formae was only 


1Sallust, Catil., 59. 

2 Caesar, Bel. Civ., i, 34; 1, 56. 

3 Cf. Rostowzew, art. “Kolonat,” in Conrad’s Handwérterbuch der 
Staatswissenschaften, v, p. 917. 

4 Cf. Simhkovitch, Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxi (1916), p. 219; Heisterbergk, 
Die Entstehung des Colonats, pp. 67-68. 

5 Cf. infra, pp. 173, 175, 179. 

6 Pelham, op. cit., p. 290. 


170 THE ROMAN COLONATE [170 


a step in the direction of the serf-colonate. The colonate 
legislation was much more than an extension of imperial 
regulations on the emperor’s estates to the Empire at large, 
as Pelham explained it. In the second century the imperial 
coloni, as well as many coloni of private possessors, were 
kept on their holdings by the fact that they felt themselves 
better off there than elsewhere on account of the many in- 
ducements offered them to remain.* But in the fourth cen- 
tury the coloni were bound to the soil by force. The end 
sought by the imperial administration was the same in each 
instance, but the means were different. What brought about 
the change of policy? This is the vital question in explain- 
ing the colonate legislation of the fourth century and this 
question Pelham did not answer. 


1Cf. infra, pp. 173, 175, 181-182, 292-294. 


CHAM ERGV i 


THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS AND THE COLONATE: 


II. 1892-1907 


In 1892 another long African inscription was brought 
to light, four years later a third was discovered, and finally 
in 1906 still another inscription was added to the list. The 
oldest and most important of these was the inscription of 
Henchir Mettich, discovered in 1896. It was an imperial 
regulation for the fundus of Villa Magna Variani, or Map- 
palia Siga, as it was called by the natives, issued by two 
imperial procuratores at Carthage, under the authority of 
“Imp. Caes. Trajani Aug. Optimi Germanici Parthici.” * 
Trajan was given the surname Parthicus by the Senate in 
116 A. D. and as he died in 117 we can be relatively sure 
that the inscription can be assigned to one of these years.” 
The inscription was engraved on the four faces of a large 
rectangular stone, and, although it is badly mutilated in 
certain places, it is nevertheless able to give a fairly adequate 
description of conditions on an African estate in the early 
part of the second century. 

The frequent mention of vilict in the inscription as well 
as the reference to servis dominicis® indicates that there 
were slaves on the estate, in all probability cultivating the 
demesne under the direction of the vilicus or steward. But 

1j,1-4. For text see Bruns, Fontes, 7th ed., no. 114; Toutain, Mém. a 
V’Acad. des Inscr., xi, 1, pp. 31 et seq. 

2 Toutain, op. cit., p. 44. 
3 Bruns, Fontes, 114, iv, 39. 
171] 171 


172 THE ROMAN COLONATE [172 


the inscription is principally concerned with the coloni, who 
seemed to be universally occupying share-rent tenures like 
the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus. The amount of the 
rent varied somewhat for the different products but was ap- 
proximately one-third of the crop. In the words of the 
regulation, 


As for those who have or will have holdings within the limits 
of the fundus of Villa Magna, that is Mappalia Siga, they ought 
to pay either to the domint or to the conductores or to the vilict 
of this fundus in entirety the shares of the fruits or of the 
products of the vine which the consuetudo Manciana has fixed 
for each of the categories which it includes: for wheat a third 
of the harvest after threshing; for beans a fourth (or a fifth 
qu....tam) after shelling; for vines a third of the product 
drawn from the vat; for olive oil, a third of the finished pro- 
duct; for honey a sextarius (about a pint) for each hive. 


Then follow some slightly mutilated passages which seem 
in general to indicate that if anyone possessed more than 
five hives of bees he would have to pay a somewhat aug- 
mented rent, while anyone attempting to defraud the estate 
by taking his hives of bees outside the fundus would be 
punished by the confiscation of the bees and honey.* Figs 
were to be dried and then divided, but in what proportions 
it is impossible to tell from the garbled state of the in- 
scription.® 

1 Tbid., i, 20-30. “Qui (i)n f(undo) Villae Magnae sive Mappalia 
Siga villas habent habebun(t), dominicis ejus f(undi) aut conductoribus 
vilicisv(e) eorum in assem partes fructum et vineam ex consuetudine 
Manciane, cujusque generis habet prestare debebunt; tritici exaream 
(pa)rtem tertiam; hordei exaream partem tertiam; fabe exaream partem 


qu...tam; vinu de laco partem tertiam; ole(i co)acti partem tertiam; 
mellis in alve(is) mellaris sextarios singulos.” 


2 Tbid., ii, 1-3. 
§ Tbid., ii, 13-17. “ Ficus aride ar(b)o(rum earum) que extra pom(a)rio 
erunt, qua pomariu(m..... in)tra villam ips(am) sit, ut non amplius 


q(....pe)rcipiat colonus arbitrio suo; co(....)ci conduct(o)ri vilicisve 
ejus f{(undi) d(are) d(ebebit).” 


173] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 173 


If the colonus plants a fig orchard he will be permitted to dispose 
of the product as he pleases for five harvests ; but after the fifth 
harvest he should give to the conductores or to the vilici of the 
fundus, the share fixed by the lex Manciana and indicated above. 
It is permitted to plant and cultivate new vines in the place of 
old vines on the following conditions: during the first five vint- 
ages the product of the vines shall be left to the disposal of the 
man who planted them; but after the fifth vintage from the time 
of planting a third of the product should be given in accordance 
with the lex Manciana to the conductores or to the vilici of the 
said fundus. It is permitted to plant and cultivate an olive 
orchard in a place which was before altogether uncultivated, 
under the following conditions: during ten harvests from the 
time of planting, the colonus can dispose of the product of this 
olive orchard as he pleases; then he should give a third of 
the olive-oil produced to the conductores or vilict of the said 
fundus. But he who has grafted wild olive trees should give 
the same third of this product at the end of five years.* 


By encouragements such as these the productive capacity 
of the domain was doubtless augmented and the tendency 
of the peasants to remain on their holdings for indefinite 
periods was considerably furthered.” When a tenant had 


1Tbid., ii, 20- ii, 12. “Si quod ficetum...factum erit, ejus fic(eti) 
fructum per continuas ficationes quinque arbitrio suo eo qui seruerit 
percipere permittitur, post quintam ficationem eadem lege M(anciana) qua 
s(upra) s(criptum) est conductoribus vilicisve ejus f(undi) p(restare) 
d(ebebit). Vineas serer(e) colere loco veterum permittitur ea con- 
dicione (ut) ex ea satione proximis vindemi(i)s quinque fructu(m) earum 
vinearum is qui ita fuerit suo arbitr(i)o percipeat, itemque post quinta 
vindemia quam ita sata erit, fructus partes tertias e lege Manciana con- 
ductoribus v(ilicisve)e ejus...dare debebu(nt. O)livetum serere colere 
in eo loco qua quis incultum excoluerit permittitur ea condicione ut ex 
ea satione ejus fructus oliveti, quid ita satum est, per olivationes proximas 
decem arbitrio suo permittere debeat, item post olivationes ole(i) coacti 
partem terti(am) conductoribus vilicisve ej (us fundi) d(are) d(ebebit). 
Qui inseruerit oleastra post (olivationes quin) que partem tertiam d(are) 
d(ebebit).” 

2 Cf. Heitland, Agricola, p. 344. 


174 THE ROMAN COLONATE [174 


set out fruit trees or vines and was receiving the product of 
them rent-free he was not likely to desert his land. Yet 
such desertion did occasionally take place, as is shown by the 
following clause of the regulation. 


If a colonus after he had cultivated a certain plot of land which 
formerly was uncultivated, and after he has built or rented a 
construction there, then deserts it and abandons it completely, 
from the time when the desertion has taken place, he who had 
or will have had the right to cultivate this field, keeps or shall 
keep this right for two years from the day when he has ceased 
to cultivate it; after two years this right shall pass to the con- 
ductores or to the vilict of the said fundus. . . . As for land 
which was cultivated during the preceding years and then has 
been abandoned the conductor or the.vilicus of the said fundus 
should make known the fact that the field has been abandoned 
and should announce it in a formal report, and the next year he 
should do the same thing, and if after two years no protest has 
been made, the conductor or vilicus should arrange to put the 
field in cultivation.* 


Besides paying the conductores a certain share of the 
product, the coloni of the fundus Magna Villa Variani like 
those of the saltus Burumtanus and the estate mentioned in 
the inscription of Gazr-Mezuar, were required to furnish a 
certain number of days’ services on the demesne every year 
during the busy season. 


1 Bruns, Fontes, 114, iv, 10-12. “(Qui su) perficiem ex inculto excoluit 
excoluer (it....e)t aedificium deposuit posuerit, elocavit(....si) desierit 
perdesierit, eo tempore quo ita ea superfi(cies) coli desit desierit, eo quo 
fuit fuerit jus colendi, dumta(xa)t bienn(i)o proximo ea qua die colere 
desierit, servatu(r) servabitur; post biennium conductores vilicisve 
eo(rum....E)a superficies que proximo annos culta fuit et coli (de- 
sie)rit, conductor vilicusve ejus {(undi) ea superficies esse d(..... )ua 
denuntiet superficiem cultam ejus non egis nav(..... ) denuntiationem 
denuntiatur(..... ), Siga sis) testa...’ )s; itemque nnsequentem( sic) 
annum (....et si vac)at ea sine quer(el)a ejus f(undi) post biennium 
‘conductor vilicusve cole(re ju) beto.” 


175] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 178 


The coloni who dwell within the fundus Villa Magna, that is 
Mappalia Siga, will each be obliged to furnish to the domini, 
the conductores, or will vilici, two days’ service every year in 
plowing, the same amount in harvest, and two days’ service for 
each other kind of work. 


The inscription also deals with the cultivation of waste 
lands outside of the estate which were known as the sub- 
cesiva. ‘Coloni of the fundus proper were permitted to take 
up holdings in the subcesiva and cultivate them, in return 
for rent in shares, in accordance with the little understood 
right of usus proprius which was included in the lex Man- 
ciana.? Gsell interpreted usus proprius to mean the right 
which was granted to the squatter colonus of providing for 
his subsistence and that of his family from the products of 
the subcesiva, while the surplus was divided with the con- 
ductor of the fundus according to an agreed ratio.? Whether 
usus proprius gave the coloni hereditary rights on their 
clearings is a problem which has aroused an enormous 
amount of discussion, but the weight of opinion seems to 
lie with those who believe that the coloni had no hereditary 
rights on the waste land before they were granted by ler 
Hadriana de rudibus agris mentioned in later inscriptions.” 

1 Tbid., iv, 23-27. “Coloni qui intra f(undum) Ville (Magne sive 
Mappalie) Sige ha(bit)abunt dominis aut conduc(toribus vilicisve) in 
assem (qu)odannis in hominibus (singulis in arati)ones operas n(umero) 


II et in messem op(eras et in curas cujusque) generis singulas operas 
binas pr(estare debebunt).” 

2 Thid., i, 6-15. “Qui eorum (i)ntra fundo Villae Mag(na)e Variani 
id est Mappalia Siga, eis eos agros qui su(bc)esiva sunt excolere per- 
mittitur lege Manciana, ita ut eas qui excoluerit usum proprium habeat. 
Ex fructibus qui eo loco nati erunt dominis au(t) conductoribus vilicisve 
ejus f(undi) partes e lege Manciana prestare debebunt hac condicione 
coloni: fructus cujusque culture quota dare adportare et terere debebunt, 
summas (redd)ant arbitratu§ (s)uo conductoribus vilicis(ve ej)us 
f (undi).” 

3 Mél. darch. et d’hist. (1898), p. 109. 

4 Cf., Toutain, op. cit., p. 59; Gsell, op. cit., p. 109; Cuq, Mém. a Pacad. 


176 THE ROMAN COLONATE [176 


Likewise uncultivated land within the estate which had been 
reclaimed + was probably held by precarious tenure until it 
was made hereditary by the law of Hadrian.? 

Besides the question of the rights of the coloni on re- 
claimed land another problem in the interpretation of the 
inscription of Henchir Mettich has called forth even more 
lengthy discussion. Was the fundus of Villa Magna Var- 
1amt an imperial domain or a private estate, and consequently 
was the constitution governing the condition of the coloni, 
the lex Manciana, an imperial or a private regulation? The 
other African inscriptions all referred to imperial domains, 
so information regarding the coloni on the private latifundia 
is all the more eagerly sought. The inscription frequently 
mentions domim to whom together with the conductores and 
vilict the coloni owed their rents and services.* Manifestly 
domim could not refer to the emperor, the proprietor of the 
imperial domains, for the use of the plural domim must 
refer to several proprietors, not to a single one.* Likewise 
the lex Manciana could not have been an imperial regulation, 
since an imperial regulation, even though it were drawn up 
by procuratores, would have borne the name of an emperor, 
like the lex Hadriana, which later came to be in force on the 
imperial domains of Africa; and of course no provincial 


des inscr., xi, I, pp. 98-99; Pernot, Mél. d’arch et dhist. (1901), pp. 
71-72; Kriiger, Zeitsch. d. Savignystift. (1800), pp. 271-272; Rostowzew, 
Studien zur Geschichte des romischen Kolonates, p. 347. 

‘Bruns, Fontes, iv, 10-13. “(Qui su)perficiem ex inculto excoluit 
excoluer (it) ....quo fuit fuerit jus colendi.” Cf. supra, p. 174. 


2 Cf. Toutain, op. cit., pp. 60-61; Cugq, op. cit., pp. 101-108; Rostowzew, 
op. cit., p. 347. 

*Eg., Bruns, Fontes, 114, i, 9-13. “Ex fructibus qui....dominis aut 
conductoribus vilicisve ejus fundi partes....prestere debebunt ...coloni; 


ili, 19-20, “Conductoribus vilicisve dominorum ejus f(undi) prestare 
debebunt.” 


* Toutain, op. cit., p. 45; Beaudouin, Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr. 
(1898), p. 41; Seeck, Zeitsch. fiir Sozial-u. Wirt., vi (1808), pp. 322-323. 


177] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 77 


magistrate would have had authority to prescribe regula- 
tions for an imperial domain.* Hence, in the opinion of 
Toutain and Beaudouin, the fundus of the Villa Magna 
Variant was a private estate.” 

On the other hand, the regulation in the inscription was 
issued by two procuratores, who must have been imperial 
agents as the inscription specifically states that one of them 
was a freedman of the emperor.* If the fundus of Villa 
Magna was a private estate, as Toutain and Beaudouin 
affirmed, it is hard to understand why imperial procuratores, 
who were charged with the supervision of the emperor’s 
provincial domains, should issue regulations governing it. 
So Schulten was led to reject the earlier hypothesis that the 
fundus was a private estate and to uphold the contrary view 
that it was an imperial domain.* But if the latter hypothesis 
be accepted how can the regulation of the unknown Manci- 
anus or Mancia be explained, as well as the use of donunz, 
both of which seem inconsistent with the theory that the 
fundus of Villa Magna was an imperial domain? The lex 
Manciana, Schulten held, was probably a law governing es- 
tates on the ager publicus issued by a Roman magistrate 
Mancia in the last century of the Republic, which after the 
Empire was extended to apply to all imperial estates. The 
word domini he believed was used synonymously with con- 
ductores, for like the emphyteutic tenants of the late Empire 
they were to all intents and purposes actual proprietors.° 

The conclusion of Schulten that the fundus of Villa 
Magna Variant was an imperial domain, at least at the time 


1 Cuaq, op. cit., p. 143. 

? Toutain, op. cit., p. 45; Beaudouin, of. cit., pp. 40-47. 

Bruns, Fontes, 114, i, 4-6. “ Data a Licinio (Ma)ximo et Feliciore 
Aug. lib. proce. ad exemplu(m) (leg)is Manciane.” 

4 Abhandl. d. Gott. Ges. de. Wiss., Philol.-Histor. Klasse, ii (1807), 
pp. 48-40. 

5 [bid., pp. 21-22, 44. 


178 THE ROMAN COLONATE [178 


of the inscription of 116-117 A. D., has been generally ac- 
cepted by commentators on the inscription of Henchir Met- 
tich whose works have appeared subsequently to Schulten’s 
essay. But his far-fetched identification of dommi and 
conductores has been universally rejected. Aside from the 
fact that the words proprietor (dominus) and lessee (con- 
ductor) are never confounded, the inscription of Henchir 
Mettich itself is always careful to distinguish the dominz 
from the conductores and the vilict. The interpretation of 
Cuq? seems to harmonize the apparently contradictory 
features of the inscription considerably more successfully. 
The lex Manciana, he said, was an old regulation of the 
Republic which governed conditions on the estates formed 
from the ager publicus, whether they were public or private 
domains and whether they were managed by their own pro- 
prietors (domint), by lessees (conductores), or slave stew- 
ards (wilict).2 The fundus of Villa Magna Variani had 


Cuq, op. cit., p. 141; Gsell, op. cit., p. 108; Seeck, op. cit., p. 323; 
Rostowzew, op. cit., pp. 324, 328; Heitland, Agricola, p. 343. 

2 Op. cit., pp. 143-145. This has been substantially followed by Gesell 
(op. cit., p. 108) and Pernot (op. cit., pp. 78-79). 

® Cuq reached his conclusion as to the date of the lex Manciana in a 
different way from Schulten. Certain legal expressions employed in the 
inscription were common in the time of Cicero but had been succeeded by 
others by the time of Trajan (Cuq, op. cit., pp. 144-145.) In addition, 
he argued, a general regulation such as the /ex Manciana which favored 
both the native cultivators and the general development of agriculture 
might very likely have been promulgated at the beginning of the period 
when Rome began seriously to exploit the fertile African lands (1bid., 
p. 145). 

Rostovtzeff argued with considerable plausibility that the ler Manciane 
was drawn up by an imperial legate to Africa under Vespasian as a 
unifying ordinance to restore order after the confusion caused by the 
enormous confiscations of Nero (op. cit., pp. 325-330). But if such a 
regulation was necessary, why was it not called the lex Vespasiana, 
especially since, as Rostovtzeff himself holds (op. cit., p. 338), the later 
lex Hadriana was merely a modification of the earlier and more com- 
prehensive lex Manciana? 

It is possible, of course, that the regulation might have been issued by 


179] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 179 


long been a private estate owned by a Varianus and his suc- 
cessors, but recently it had become an imperial domain. 
The regulation of the procuratorcs in the inscription of 
Henchir Mettich ad exemplum legis Mancianae* was for the 
purpose of adapting the fundus to the new régime and at 
the same time of assuring the coloni that the rules of the 
lex Manciana would continue in force. In quoting from the 
old regulations frequently the old expression domini, con- 
ductores, vilicive was retained, even though in the case of the 
fundus of Villa Magna Variant it was superfluous. Thus 
the use of domini in the inscription does not prove, as 
Toutain and Beaudouin had thought, that the fundus of 
Villa Magna was a private estate. But it does bring to light 
the very important fact that the lex Manciana was a general 
law which could be applied to private possessions as well as 
imperial domains; and that the condition of the African 
coloni did not differ materially on the private estates and the 
imperial domains, as Pelham had believed. 

The theory that the lex Manciana was a general law and 
not a private regulation for a single estate was strongly 
substantiated by the discovery of a later inscription at Ain- 
el-Djemala in 1906, ten years after the inscription of Hen- 
chir Mettich was found. The inscription, which is of the 
time of Hadrian (117-138 A. D.), begins with a petition 
which a group of peasants had sent to the imperial procura- 
tores. ‘These peasants requested that they be granted the 
privilege which the coloni of the neighboring saltus Neroni- 
anus already enjoyed of reclaiming swampy and wooded 


a proconsul Mancia under Augustus or even Tiberius; for Africa was a 
senatorial and not a Caesarian province and its administration retained for 
some time the characteristics of the Republic. Cf. McFayden, “ The 
Princeps and the Senatorial Provinces,” Class. Philol., xvi (1021), pp. 
34-50. 

14, 5-6. 


8a THE ROMAN COLONATE [180 


lands? in accordance to the terms of the lex Manciana.* 
Their request was granted and all waste land, as well as land 
which was wooded and swampy, in four imperial domains, 
the saltus Blandianus, Udensis, Lamianus, and Domitianus 
was made available for assignment to anyone who wished to 
reclaim it “in accordance with the lex Manciana.”* ‘The 
references to the lea Manciana in the inscription of Ain-el- 
Djemala thus lend support to the conclusion already reached 
by the majority of the commentators on the inscription of 
Henchir Mettich that the lex Manciana was not merely a 
regulation governing the relations of the fundus of Villa 
Magna Variani but was instead a general law with juris- 
diction over several estates and probably the whole province.* 

In the inscription of Ain-el-Djemala the procuratores not 
only granted the petition of the peasants to make use of the 
privileges of the Jer Manciana but they also took this occasion 
to apply a new regulation of the present emperor Hadrian 
to the four imperial domains, the saltus Blandianus, Udensis, 
Lamianus, and Domttianus. By a rather remarkable coin- 
cidence the communication of the procuratores (sermo pro- 
curatorum) which applied the law of Hadrian to these do- 
mains is almost identical word for word with the sermo pro- 
curatorum of the inscription of Ain Ouassel, which had been 
discovered in 1892, not far from the place where the inscrip- 
tion of Ain-el-Djemala, was found fourteen years later. 
The inscription of Ain Ouassel is a much later document than 
the inscription of Ain-el-Djemala, as it dates from the reign 


' Bruns, Fontes, 7th ed., 116, i, 5-6. “... (agros) qui sunt in paludibus 
et in silvestribus.” 

?Tbid., i, 7. “...lege Manciana condicione.” 

3 Tbid., iv, 8-10. “Si qui agri cessant et rudes sunt, si qui silvestres 
aut palustres in eo saltuum tractu (1. e. ii, 10-13, saltus Blandianus et 
Udensis et illae partes quae ex saltu Lamiano et Dom(i)tiano iunctae 
Thusdritano sunt) volentes lege Manciana colere ne prohibeas.” 


* Cf. Schulten, Klio, vii (1907), p. 201. 


181 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS ISI 


of Septimius Severus (193-206 A. D.), three quarters of a 
century after the time of Hadrian. But it was carved on 
an altar erected to the memory of Hadrian, and contains in 
the sermo procuratorum an exemplum legis Hadrianae de 
rudibus agris,* so far as it applied to the saltus Blandianus, 
Udensis, Lamianus, and Domitianus. The sermo procura- 
torum is somewhat mutilated in both the inscription of Ain 
Ouassel and Ain-el-Djemala, but the uninjured portions of 
the one have served to restore gaps in the other, and the re- 
sult is a fairly complete copy of the lex Hadriana de rudibus 
agrts as it was adapted to the four imperial domains. 

The lex Hadriana provided in the first place that all land 
which had never been put in cultivation by the conductores 
or land which had been abandoned for ten years was to be 
open for occupation, and those who reclaimed these lands 
should receive full rights of possession, enjoyment, and be- 
quest over them. 


Since our emperor, because of the indefatigable care which he 
is constantly exercising in behalf of the welfare of his subjects, 
has ordered all lands to be cultivated which are suitable for the 
growing of olives, vines, or grain, therefore permission is 
granted to everyone to occupy the lands which are divided in 
centuriae * of the saltus Blandianus and Udensis, and of the 
parts of the saltus Lamianus and Domitianus which are joined 
to the saltus Thusdritanus and are not being cultivated by the 
conductores; and to those who occupy these lands the right of 
possession, of enjoyment, and of transmission to their heirs is 
hereby granted, which right is included in the lex Hadriana in 
regard to waste land and land which has remained uncultivated 
for ten successive years.® 


1 Bruns, Fontes, 7th ed., no. 115, i, 7-83 ii, 10-11. 

2 Surveyed land in plots of 200 or 240 jugera. Cf. Siculus Flaccus 
in Gromatici Veteres, ed. Lachmann, 1, pp. 154-156, 150. 

* Ain Ouassel i, 9-ii, 13; Ain-el-Djemala ii, entire. “Quia Caesar 
noster pro infatigabili cura per quam adsidue pro humanis utilitatibus 


a THE ROMAN COLONATE [182 


Tenants who took up holdings on waste or deserted land 
and brought them under cultivation were required to pay the 
“customary third part of the fruits.”’* But as in the case 
of the lea Manciana certain exemptions were given. 


As for olive trees which anyone sets out in trenches or grafts 
on wild olive trees, no part of the fruit gathered will be de- 
manded for the first ten years; and for other fruits for the first 
seven years; and only those fruits will fall to the division (4. e 
pay a share as rent) which will be sold by the possessors. As 
for the shares of dry crops? which each tenant will be obliged 
to pay, he shall pay those for the first five years to him under 
whose lease he has occupied the land; and after that time to the 
account (of the fiscus).* 


_ The commentators on the new African inscriptions did not 
limit themselves to clarifying obscure passages in the inscrip- 


excubat omnes partes agrorum quae tam oleis aut vineis quam frumentis 
aptae sunt excoli iubet, idcirco permissu providentiae eius potestas fit 
omnibus etiam eas partes occupandi quae in centuris elocatis saltus Blan- 
diani et Udensis et in iis partibus sunt quae ex saltu Lamiano et 
Dom(i)tiano iunctae Thusdritano sunt nec a conductoribus exercentur ; 
isqtie qui occupaverint possidendi ac fru(en) di eredique s(u)o relinquendi 
id ius datur quod et lege Ha(dria)na comprehensum de rudibus agris et 
iis qui per X an(n)os continuos inculti sunt.” 

' Ain Ouassel iii, 2-4; Ain-el-Djemala iii, 3-5. 
tertias partes fructuum (da) bit.’ 

* Probably grain, as most commentators hold. Cf. Carton, Revue 
archéol., xxi (1893), p. 26; Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1894), p. 214: 
Carcopino, Mél. d’arch. et d’hist., xxvi (1906), p. 457; Heitland, Agricola, 
p. 350. Mispoulet, however, translates “partes aridas fructuum” as 
“the rents of desert lands.” Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xvi (1892), 
p. 121. 

* Ain Ouassel, iii, 7-18; Ain-el-Djemala, iii, 8-12. “De oleis quas 
quis(que aut in scro)bibus posuerit aut oleastris (inse)ruerit, captorum 
fructuum nul(la pars) decem proximis annis exiget(ur) ; set nec de pomis - 
septem annis proximis; nec alia pom(a) in divisione(m) umquam cadent 
qu(a)m quae venibunt a possessoribus. Quas partes aridas fruct(u)um 
quisque debebit dare, eas pr(o)ximo buinquennio (sic) ei dabit in cuius 
conductione agr(um) occupaverit; post it tempus rationi.” 


6é 


..qttae (dari so) lent 


183] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 183 


tions, but many of them attempted to determine the relation 
which the lex Manciana and the lex Hadriana bore to the 
agricultural policy of the imperial administration and espec- 
ially to the problem of the origin of the serf-colonate. Mis- 
poulet, the first commentator on the inscription of Ain Ouas- 
sel, like Mommsen who first discussed the inscription of 
Souk-el-Khmis, doubted whether the second-century inscrip- 
tions threw any light upon the origin of the colonate, which 
he regarded as exclusively a fourth-century institution, the 
result of the universal immobilization of status of the time.’ 
But Carton, the next writer on the inscription, believed that 
the inscription of Ain Ouassel offered a real clue to the 
explanation of the origin of the colonate. This was the 
method of putting waste lands in cultivation which was in- 
augurated by the lex Hadriana.° 

The Emperor Hadrian, as is well known, was a great 
traveler, and in his journeys through the provinces he must 
have been seriously concerned over the large amount of un- 
cultivated land to be found even in fertile grain provinces 
like Africa. Consequently, when he drew up a general re- 
gulation for his provincial domains, he included a chapter 
which concerned itself with the reclamation of waste lands. 
Many inducements were offered to peasants of all conditions 
to take up holdings on the waste lands as partiary tenants of 
the crown, but so far as the cultivators themselves were con- 
cerned the most important provision of the law was the jus 
heredt relinquendt, for this made them eventually hereditary 
tenants on the imperial domains. It was a condition not at 
all unfavorable to the tenant at first, but as generation fol- 
lowed generation in the same condition the custom of culti- 
vating the same plot of state land crystallized into obliga- 
tion. The civil and religious wars of the third and fourth 


1 Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr.. xvi (1892), p. 124. 
* Revue archéologique, xxi (1893), pp. 21-39. 


184 THE ROMAN COLONATE [i84 


centuries and the disorder and devastations which followed 
in their wake ruined many of the state tenants and made it 
impossible for them to pay their rents. The arrears in rents 
accumulated and when the fathers died the burden of the 
debt was passed on to the sons. ‘The latter could not leave 
the land, for their only means of maintaining a livelihood in 
those troubled times lay in their inherited plots of land, 
debt-ridden though they were. Finally, with the increase of 
internal warfare and confusion, the colonate proper was 
definitely established. The lex Hadriana itself did not 
create the colonate, said Carton, but it formed an hereditary 
status which the anarchy and civil wars of the third century 
transformed into the serf-colonate of the Codes.* 

The theory of Carton, as to the important role of the 
lex Hadriana in the development of the colonate, was sub- 
stantially followed by Carcopino, the first commentator on 
the inscription of Ain-el-Djemala.* The ancestors of the 
serf-coloni of the Codes were not the coloni on the domains, 
he said, but the state-tenants who reclaimed waste lands 
under the favorable terms of the lex Hadriana. Originally 
they must have been peasants with a certain amount of capital 
tor they planted their holdings at their own expense with 
clives and vines, fruits which do not yield a crop for several 
years. But in the late Empire their fortunes declined and 
they were transformed from partiary tenants into serf- 
coloni, not on account of the devastations of war, as Carton 
had maintained, but through the general “ economic decad- 
ence” (décadence économique) of the times.® 

With the discovery of the inscription of Henchir Mettich, 
Cuq* connected the origin of the colonate with the earlier 


1 Tbid., p. 38. 

2 Mél. d’arch. et d’hist., xxvi (1906), pp. 365-481. 

3 Thid., pp. 403, 480. 

* Mém. a lacad. des inscrip., xi, 1 (1897), pp. 83-146. 


185] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 185 


lex Manctana, which he believed was ‘a regulation of the 
Republic.» The African coloni, who were under the juris: 
diction of the lex Manciana, were by no means serf-coloni, 
he said, yet the result of the law was to bring about per- 
manence of conditions on the African estates. The pro- 
prietors might change, or a private estate might be converted 
into an imperial domain, but the condition of the coloni re- 
mained the same. The result of this was to cause the coloni 
to be regarded as an integral part of the estate, who went 
with it whenever the estate was sold or alienated in any way. 
Finally, in the interests of the treasury, the coloni were for- 
bidden to leave the estate which their ancestors had freely 
consented to cultivate.* 

A much greater contribution to the treatment of the his- 
torical development of the coloni was made by Schulten, who 
besides publishing commentaries on all three of the African 
inscriptions discovered since 1890, discussed the origin of 
the colonate in two other essays.* In 1894 in an article on 
“ Die Lex Hadriana de rudibus agris,” * Schulten expressed 
his approval of Carton’s theory that the hereditary rights 
granted by the lex Hadriana constituted the first step to- 
ward the serf-colonate. Hadrian was the great organizer of 
the imperial domains and the origin not only of the colonate 
but of emphyteusis and émody can be traced to his domanial 
regulations. But in subsequent essays Schulten developed 
a more comprehensive theory of the colonate. 


1Tbid., pp. 144-145. 

3 JIbid., p. 146. “On finit, dans un intérét fiscal, par leur défendre de 
quitter le fonds que leur ancétres avaient librement consenti a cultiver.” 
Cf. Cuq, Les institutions juridiques des Romains (Paris, 1902), vol. i, 
Pp. 790-792. 

3 Die rémischen Grundherrschaften (Weimar, 1896); “Der romische 
Kolonat,” Historische Zeitschrift, xxviii (1897), pp. 1-17. 

4 Hermes, xxix (1894), pp. 204-230. 

5 Ibid., pp. 224, 227. 


126 THE ROMAN COLONATE [186 


The origin of the serf-colonate, said Schulten in his 
Romischen Grundherrschaften, is to be found in the gradual 
evolution of the status of the small tenant on the great 
estates." Legally the coloni as late as the third century held 
short-term leases which they were under no obligation to 
renew. But in actual practice they tended more and more 
to become an hereditary and dependent tenantry. In the his- 
torical development of the tenant classes in Italy Schulten 
followed Fustel de Coulanges in stressing the importance of 
debt on the condition of the small tenant. Coloni who were 
not in arrears were perfectly free to leave their leaseholds 
at the expiration of their contract, but if they were in debt 
they could not leave unless they should happen to find some- 
one who would be willing to offer bail for them.*. Besides 
being retained by their debts, self-interest caused many peas- 
ants to remain on their landlord’s estates, and Italian in- 
scriptions show that coloni frequently cultivated the same 
plot of land for many years, if not for their whole lives.* 
There came to be very early a close connection between the 
coloni and the estate in which they lived and cultivated the 
soil. They were spoken of as the coloni agri Caelt,* the 
colont fundi Mariani,’ just as they were called the colom 
saltus Burunitant in Africa.6 They followed their landlord 


1P. o4. 

? Histor. Zeitsch., xxviii (1897), p. 7. Schulten relied on the same 
text in the Digest which had been formerly cited by Fustel de Coulanges. 
Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3. “...colonorum, qui finita conductione, ister- 
posita cautione...discesserant.” For the criticism which professors of 
Roman Law have raised against this use of interposita cautione, cf. 
supra, p. 162. 

* Cf. C.I.L., x, 1877. “Q. Justeio Diadumeno...coluit annis XXXXV 
(176 A. D.); C. I. L., ix, 3674. “ Colonus fundi Tironiani quem: coluit 
annis numero L.” . 

"10, 0) Es, vi, 0275. 

°C.1..L., vi, 9276. 

* Schulten, of. cit., p. 8. 


187] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 187 


to battle in the civil wars,’ and even Catiline in his desperate 
cause was supported by his coloni.” The Jandlords were al- 
ways trying to find ways of getting the maximum amount 
of work out of their tenants and beginning with the first 
century after Christ a change from a money rent to a share 
rent tenure was begun on private estates; * and this change 
proved an important step in the direction of the serf- 
colonate.* 

However, as the partiarius colonus is only mentioned once 
in the Digest,° it is doubtful whether the share colonate was 
ever very extensive on the estates of private individuals. 
But if unusual in the sphere of private law, the share rent 
system seems to have been generally practiced on the im- 
perial domains, at least in the provinces.© It was not a 
native Italian institution. It was first met by the Romans 
when they conquered the Hellenistic land of Sicily. Later 
when they spread their conquests eastward the Romans 
found that in other Hellenistic lands, such as Asia Minor, 
the realm of the Seleucids and the Attalids, and Egypt, the 
kingdom of the Ptolemies, the same share-rent system was 
in common usage. As it was the Roman provincial policy 
to change the economic organization of the conquered lands 
as little as possible, it is very probable that the Hellenistic 
practice of share rent was adopted generally on the imperial 
domains.’ 

The African inscriptions presented a clear picture of a 
dependent tenantry paying rent in shares under the super- 


1 Caesar, Bel. Civ., i, 34; 56. 

? Sallust, Catil. 59. 

> Plin., Epist., ix, 37. 

* Schulten, op. cit., p. 9. 

§ Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. 

*Schulten, Abhandl. d. Gétt. Ges. d. Wiss., Philol.-Histor. Klasse. 
ii (1897), p. 45. 

'Tbid., p. 46. 


188 THE ROMAN COLONATE [188 


vision of administrative officials. While not legally bound 
to the soil they were held there by bonds of custom which 
they found impossible to break, even when they were op- 
pressed by the conductores and the procuratores. One ele- 
ment of great significance in their condition was the fact that 
since the proprietor of the imperial domains was the em- 
peror, domanial regulations came to have the force of im- 
perial law." In Africa the lex Manciana had proved an 
important measure in regulating the share rent of the coloni 
and in offering all sorts of inducements to bring waste land 
under cultivation. Still more important was the lex Hadri- 
ana which introduced the principle of hereditary tenures on 
the imperial domains and extended the right of reclamation 
to all uncultivated land within the estate as well as waste 
land. It was a step in the direction both of the serf-colonate 
and emphyteusis and showed that the administration was 
ready to make far-reaching innovations in order to maintain 
the cultivation of the soil. Under these imperial regula- 
tios the coloni gradually lost their character as tenants and 
became imperial peasants (kaiserliche Leute) pure and 
simple.” 

By the third century the coloni even on private estates had 
become so closely identified with the estates that the jurist 
Marcian said that they could not be bequeathed without the 
estate to which they were attached,® while a passage from the 
Sententiae of Paulus showed that the colonus like the slave 
actor might be included in the inventory of an estate.* Yet 


1 Schulten, Grundherrschaften, pp. 96-97. Cf. Vorwort., “Aui den 
kaiserlichen Domiinen ist der Pachter zum an die Scholle gebundene 
Colonen geworden, weil sich hier privates and Offentliches Recht in einem 
fort durchkreuzen.”’ 

2Tbid., p. 06. Cf. Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1804), pp. 224, 227; Kho, 
vii (1907), pp. 201-203. 

3 Dig., xxx, I, 112, pr. “Si quis inquilinos sine praediis, quibus ad- 
haerent, legaverit: inutile est legatum.” 

* Sent., iii, 6, 48. “Actor vel colonus ex alio fundo in eodem constitutus, 
qui cum omni instrumento legatus erat, ad legatarium non pertinet, nisi 
eum ad ius eius fundi testator voluerit pertinere.” 


189 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 189 


the coloni were not legally attached at this time for a rescript 
of Philip of 244 A. D. said that they could not be retained 
on a landlord’s estate after they had fulfilled the terms of 
their lease." Legally the glebae adscriptio came only with 
the fourth century. Economicaly it had come long before, 
developing first on the imperial domains. But, in the fourth 
century, in the interests of taxation the coloni were legally 
bound forever to the soil and the domanial regulations of the 
first and second centuries were transformed into imperial 
laws affecting the tenantry of the entire empire.” 

Schulten’s theory was followed very closely in 1897 by 
Beaudouin in his Les grands domaines dans empire romain.* 
The colonate, he said, was primarily the result of the histor- 
ical development of the tenantry on the great estates. A per- 
petual tenantry was an ideal set forth by Columella in the 
first century but it had become an economic necessity on the 
imperial domains in the second century. The lex Hadriana 
introduced hereditary tenures on the estates of the emperor 
and finally the legislation of the fourth century made adscrip- 
tion to the soil universal. The last measure was merely an 
extension of a development which had already taken place 
on the imperial domains and was taken in the interests of 
the treasury. The most important source of revenue of the 
government was the land tax, while the income of private 
proprietors was chiefly derived from the rents of their coloni. 
So the perpetual and hereditary colonate of the imperial 
domains was introduced on the private estates in order to 
euarantee to the proprietors their rents and in turn to insure 
the government that the land tax would be regularly paid.’ 

1 Cod. Just., iv, 65, 11. “Invitos conductores (—coloni) seu heredes 
eorum post tempora locationis impleta non esse retinendos saepe rescrip- 
tum est.” 

2 Schulten, Grundherrschaften, pp. 95-97. 

3 Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xxi (1807), pp. 692-715. 

* Tbid., pp. 605-700. 


190 THE ROMAN COLONATE [190 


But aside from the development of a perpetual and heredi- 
tary colonate on the imperial domains, two other accessory 
causes had some influence in the formation of the universal 
colonate of the late Empire. One was the settlement of bar- 
barians within the realm in the same condition as the imperial 
coloni, while the second was the use of native cultivators as 
dependent tenants on Roman provincial estates, such as the 
coloni of the African inscriptions.* 

The first commentators on the African inscriptions had 
somewhat overstressed the importance of the information 
contained in them by maintaining that the serf-colonate 
could be traced ultimately to the lea Manciana or the lex 
Hadriana. ‘The African colonate as regulated by these laws 
was far different from the tenant-colonate in Italy as des- 
cribed by the Digest, yet it was not the colonate of the Codes. 
Schulten and Beaudouin, while they emphasized the import- 
ance of the lex Manciana and lex Hadriana in developing a 
permanent and hereditary tenantry on the imperial domains, 
realized that further explanation was necessary to account 
for the colonate of the Codes, so they went back to the old 
taxation theory of Wallon and Revillout to explain the colon- 
ate as a universal institution. However the next writer, 
Seeck,? believed that there was still too large a hiatus from 
the hereditary tenantry of the second century to the tax re- 
forms of the late Empire, so in rgo1 he offered a new theory 
of the colonate. 

Like the preceding writers Seeck believed that the colon- 
ate was closely connected with the depression in the status 
of the tenant classes, but he found that the historical develop- 
ment of the tenantry differed somewhat in different parts of 
the Empire. In Italy, the concentration of landed property 


1 Tbid., pp. 701-708. 
2 Art., “ Colonatus” in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real Encyclopadie der clas- 
sischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1901), vol. iv, pp. 483-510. 


19i | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS ent 


into latifundia during the Republic and.the importation ot 
enormous masses of slaves as agricultural laborers almost 
completely destroyed the native peasant class. But the slave 
population soon declined in numbers and the relatively peace- 
ful policy of the Empire brought in no fresh hordes of cap- 
tives to make up for the loss. Soon proprietors found that 
they had an insufficient supply of labor to keep their estates 
in cultivation and they were obliged to seek free tenants as 
cultivators for their lands. However, as the old peasant 
stock had long since disappeared, the only available material 
for tenants was the dregs of the city proletariat.1 But a 
farming class is not made in a day; and this city rabble proved 
wretched farmers. Slave wilict were set over them to see 
that they were up in time for work but their lack of energy 
and improvident habits soon caused them to fall into debt, 
from which they never seemed able to extricate themselves, 
notwithstanding the remissions of rent which the landlords 
occasionally granted. The result was that agriculture in 
Italy was far from profitable either to the tenant or the pro- 
prietor.? 

In Africa the coloni apparently were in a considerably 
more vigorous condition in the first century under the lex 
Manciana. But during the second century Seeck believed 
that the decline in population which was already noticeable 
in other regions of the Empire commenced to make itself 
felt in Africa. The failing slave supply was unable to keep 
the demesne lands in cultivation and the conductores at- 
tempted to make up for the lack of slave labor by forcing the 
coloni to furnish more days’ services than specified in the 
lex Hadriana. The procuratores, sympathizing with the 
conductores in their endeavor to maintain cultivation on the 
demesne, winked at their encroachments on the law and it was 


1 Tbid., p. 488, “ die Hefe des stadtischen Proletariats.” 
7 Tbid., pp. 487-489. 


192 THE ROMAN COLONATE [192 


only rarely that the coloni could obtain relief from the em- 
peror, like the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus. The amount 
of deserted land increased steadily. The lex Manciana of 
the Republic had concerned itself only with the reclamation 
of waste land while the law of Hadrian opened all deserted 
land to cultivators, making the coloni who reclaimed it hered- 
itary tenants of the crown. In 193 A. D. the Emperor 
Pertinax went a step farther than Hadrian and offered de- 
setted land not as tenancies but in full ownership with a ten 
year tax exemption to anyone who guaranteed to keep it in 
cultivation." Yet even laws as favorable as those of Hadrian 
and Pertinax seemed unable to check the depopulation which 
was threatening to take away all value from the land he- 
cause of the lack of cultivators.” 

In Greece conditions were worse than in any other pro- 
vince, for there depopulation had gone so far that two-thirds 
of the land was uncultivated.? In Egypt alone the popula- | 
tion held its own, but because of the great demands on the 
province from the rest of the Empire the position of the 
Egyptian tenant was anything but a desirable one. The 
holdings of land were very small and intensively cultivated 
while the rent which the tenants were obliged to pay steadily 
mounted. Under the Ptolemies papyri show that the Egypt- 
ian tenant paid rent of one-fifth of his produce; by the time 
of the Emperor Tiberius the rent had been raised to one- 
third; while by the fourth century it had reached one-half.* 
In addition to his rent the tenant was compelled to pay taxes, 
amounting to one-fifth of his product so he was left with less 
than one-third of his product for his own livelihood. 
Thus, although the symptoms of decline were not as marked 

! Herodian, ii, 4, 12(6). 
* Seeck, of. cit., p. 492. 


*Ibid., p. 494. 
* Tbid., p. 4092. 


193 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 193 


in Egypt as elsewhere, it is doubtful whether the Egyptian 
tenants were in a better condition than the coloni of the rest 
of the Empire. 

The depopulation of the Empire was already causing’ ser- 
ious misgivings in the first century, but the tremendous losses 
in population from the plague of 166 A. D. left enormous 
stretches of land without a cultivator. To offset the losses 
in population Marcus Aurelius imported thousands of bar- 
barian captives as cultivators of the deserted lands. Pre- 
vious writers on the barbarian settlements had attempted to 
relate the settlements of Marcus to the transplantation of the 
Scyrae as coloni in the fifth century." But Seeck presented 
a new method of determining the condition of the settled 
barbarians. Among the Germans themselves, he said, the 
agricultural work was done by slave captives who were 
known as “lites.” The “lite’’ was more of a serf than a 
slave as he cultivated the soil with very little direct super- 
vision of his master. However, he was not allowed to leave 
the tribal land and paid a fixed rent in grain, cattle, and wool. 
When the Romans transplanted their German dedititu within 
the Empire, Seeck maintained that they became the “ lites ” 
of the Romans and held the same position on the lands of 
the Roman Empire that their own captives had held in their 
native homes. The barbarians whom Marcus settled in 
Gaul were known as laeti, which Seeck held was the Latinized 
term for “lites.” However, the more common term for 
the barbarian cultivators was inguilini. These inguilint were 
closely associated with the coloni on the great estates. Both 
occupied a dependent position but the tqulint like the Ger- 
man “lites”? were tied forever to the soil while the coloni 
were still free to leave if they wished.* 

The coloni were brought into the same condition as the 


: Cf. supra, pp. 35, 48, 57-58, 76. 
* Seeck, op. cit., pp. 495-496. 


194 THE ROMAN COLONATE [194 


inquilint by the tax legislation of Diocletian. When Diocle- 
tian devised tax units called capita or juga, coloni were as- 
similated with the zquzlint and slaves in forming a caput. 
The decuriones were made responsible for the taxes and if 
the tax collection fell short of the assessed amount they were 
obliged to pay the tax from their own resources. The 
heavier taxes of the tetrarchy caused many of the coloni to 
desert their holdings, and, to prevent the decuriones trom 
being ruined by their responsibility for the taxes of the 
coloni, the coloni were bound to the soil in the same way as 
the barbarian mquiluu.* But the underlying cause of the 
whole development of the colonate, from the decline of slave 


culture and the depression of the status of the tenantry to — 


the settlement of barbarian izqutlii and the final adscription 
of the coloni to the glebe, was the steady decline in population 
of the Empire.° 

Seeck did not differ greatly from his predecessors in his 
account of the gradual depression of the free tenant in Italy 
and the provinces and of the final legal attachment of the 
coloni to the soil in the interests of taxation. But his in- 
troduction of the barbarian “ inquilinate”’ as the model of 
the colonate was a return to the theory of Zumpt and 
Huschke; and the arguments with which he supported his 
assumptions were of considerably more doubtful validity 
than the arguments previously advanced by the earlier ex- 
ponents of the theory of barbarian settlements. His whole 
theory rests on the hypothesis that the Latin word laetus 
was derived from the German “lite,” or “ lide.’ Such a 
derivation of laetus had originally been suggested by Gotho- 
fredus in the seventeenth century * but it had been rejected 
as untenable by later expositors of Roman and barbarian 


‘Tbid., pp. 497-498. 
2 Tbid., pp. 509-510, et passim. 
* Commentary on Cod. Theod., vii, 15, 1. 


195] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 195 


law.’ The laeti were not serfs like the German “lites,” but 


were free landholders who received lands along the Rhine 
frontier in return for military service. The second mistake 
which Seeck made in regard to the laeti was in confounding 
them with the barbarian dedititu. The dedititii were cap- 
tives and if they were not settled in the Empire as coloni at 
least they held a position of considerable dependence. The 
laett, on the other hand, were foederati * who held land along 
the frontier in a condition precisely similar to that of the 
veterans on the fund: limitrophi.2 Thus the laett were re- 
lated neither to the German “lites” nor to the serf-coloni. 

But the more common name by which the settled barbarian 
was known was inqutlinus, according to Seeck. This use of 
the word inqutlinus Seeck derived from the famous passage 
from Marcian* in which it was said that tquilint could not 
be bequeathed without the estate to which they were at- 
tached.° Since the decision of Marcian rested on a rescript 
of Marcus Aurelius, and the barbarians which that emperor 
transplanted were the only part of the agricultural population 
which was then attached to the soil, the imqutlint must have 
been the barbarian serf-tenants, Seeck argued. 

Just in what way the inquilini differed from the coloni has 
always puzzled commentators on the Roman Codes. Origi- 
nally inquilinus meant the tenant of a city dwelling just as 
colonus referred to the tenant of a farm. But in the Codes 
the word inquilinus like colonus was used to designate an 


1 Cf. Giraud, Hist. du droit francais, i, pp. 185-187; Guérard, Polyp- 
tyque d’ Irminon, i, p. 275; Serrigny, Droit public romain, i, pp. 362-365. 
Giraud, op. cit., p. 189; Serrigny, op. cit., p. 360. 

" Giraud, op, cit., p. 196; Léotard, Essat sur la condition des barbares, 
pp. 118-1109. 

4 Dig., Xxx, 1, 112, pr. Cf. supra, p. 188. 

5 Seeck, op. cit., p. 496. Cf. Seeck, “Geschichte des Untergangs der 
antiken Welt,” i, pp. 585-590. 


196 THE ROMAN COLONATE [196 


agricultural serf-tenant. ‘The two words were apparently 
used interchangeably and a constitution of Arcadius and 
Honorius of 400 A. D. said that although there was a differ- 
ence of name between the inqutlini and the coloni there was 
practically (paene) no difference between their condition.’ 
Whether the inquilint were barbarian serf-tenants, as Seeck 
contended, or not, it is impossible to decide because of the 
absolute lack of evidence the one way or the other. But of 
one thing we may be fairly sure, and that is that there was 
no more difference between the inquilint and the coloni at 
the time of the Digest than at the time of the Codes. If 
the decision of Marcian indicated that the inquthni had be- 
come so closely associated with an estate that they were be- 
queathed with it at the death of the owner, a contempora- 
neous decision of Paulus cited by Schulten* testified that 
the coloni were in a similar condition for they could be 
included in the inventory of an estate; while a decision of 
Ulpian in the reign of Alexander Severus in regard to the 
registration of tenants in the census, treated the imquilini 
and coloni in a precisely similar manner.* So, whatever 
type of tenant the inquilinus did represent, it is certain that 
the “ inquilinate” did not, as Seeck supposed, serve as the 
model after which the colonate was formed. 

Seeck’s treatment of the laeti and the inquilini was the - 
weakest part of his theory. But even though he himseif 
regarded the “‘ inquilinate” as an essential part of his doc- 
trine, much remained in his explanation of the origin of the 
colonate that was suggestive and enlightening. In his de- 
scription of the gradual depression of the free tenantry in 

1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 13. “... inter inquilinos colonosve, quorum quantum 


ad originem pertinet vindicandam indiscreta eademque paene videtur esse 
condicio, licet sit discrimen in nomine.” 

2 Cf. supra, p. 188. 

5 Dig., L, 15, 4, 8. “Si quis inquilinum vel colonum non fuerit pro- 
fessus, vinculis censualibus tenetur.” 


197] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 197 


Italy and the provinces, he showed more clearly than any of 
his predecessors that the peasantry were in the grip of the 
same forces which were bringing about the decay and de- 
struction of the ancient world. The key-factor in the de- 
cline of ancient civilization, according to Seeck, was race 
suicide. The population shrank steadily century after cen- 
tury and the only way to keep the lands in cultivation was to 
bring the agricultural classes more and more under the con- 
trol of the landlords. In Italy the coloni became a dependent 
class of debtor tenants; in Africa they became a perpetual 
hereditary tenantry subject to increasing exactions on the 
part of their overlords; in Egypt the coloni retained a pro- 
gressively smaller share of their produce as time went on, 
until the fourth century they had barely enough to maintain 
a livelihood. Every Roman right and privilege gave way to 
the desperate energy of a decaying empire to make up for its 
decreasing man-power by forcing the survivors to perform 
more and more work in a condition of increasing servitude. 

Like Seeck, Vinogradoff, the next writer to take up the 
problem of the colonate,’ believed that the origin of the 
colonate was intimately connected with the economic decline 
of the Roman Empire; but instead of being the result of an 
arbitrary depression of status of the free tenant, Vino- 
gradoff held that the colonate was primarily a meliorative 
institution devised for the purpose of maintaining and im- 
proving agriculture, in a period when productive agriculture 
was carried on with increasing difficulty.* Such certainly 
was the case in the transformation of the slave from a mem- 
ber of a chain gang to the condition of a slave tenant with 
a home and a plot of land of his own. This change was not 
made in the interests of humanity but because it had become 
necessary to give the slave a direct personal interest in the 


1 Growth of the Manor (London, 1905), pp. 67-83, 107-113. 
2 Tbid., pp. 76, 79. 


198 THE ROMAN COLONATE [108 


work of cultivation, if the cultivation of the land was to be — 


maintained on a profitable basis; and encouragement suc- 
ceeded where force had failed. Also, in case of the large 
fandholders, the emphyteutic legislation of the late Empire 
offered important inducements in the way of remission of 
taxes, hereditary tenures, and low rent in order to bring 
deserted land into cultivation. It is not likely, said Vino- 
gradoff, at a time when a policy of encouragement was re- 
lied on in the case of slaves and the great landlords, that the 
coloni alone should have been held to their work by force.’ 

The “emphyteutic aspect’ of the colonate is plainly vis- 
ible in the African inscriptions. The rent which the coloni 
were required to pay was only one-third of their product, 
which was very moderate especially in view of the fact that 
the landlord had to pay one-fifth of the total product to the 
government in taxes, thus receiving a net rent of less than 
one-seventh for his lands.* In addition, the coloni were 
merely held to six days’ services a year which is insignificant 
compared to the two or three days a week required of the 
medieval serf. Further, the cultivation of waste lands and 
the planting of new crops were encouraged by bounties of 
considerable value, such as remission of rent for a period of 
years and possessory and hereditary rights on their holdings. 
In fact the whole imperial policy seemed to be in the direc- 
tion of developing and maintaining a sturdy free peasantry 
on the estates of the crown. Of course occasionally the 


! Thid., p. 77. 

*Ibid., p. 80. According to Vinogradoff the land tax was wholly sub- 
tracted from the landlord’s share of the product, while according to 
Seeck (op. cit., p. 492), the tax was taken altogether from the tenant’s 
share. As we have no information on this subject either alternative may 
be correct, or neither; for there is nothing to preclude the possibility 
that the imperial tax was deducted from both the landlord’s and the 
tenant’s share, which would give the landlord a net return of approximately 
one-fourth of the product (4/15) while the tenant would retain a little 
more than one-half (8/15). 


199 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 199 


conductores and procuratores were guilty of encroachments 
on the rights of the imperial coloni, but the latter were not 
slaw to raise strenuous protests and their rights were upheld 
by imperial rescripts as the inscriptions of Souk-el Khmis, 
Gazr-Mezuar, and Ain Zaga bear witness. 

But the principal argument in favor of an emphyteutic 
theory of the colonate lay in the later history of the colonate 
itself, Vinogradoff contended. There were numerous de- 
crees during the fourth and fifth centuries enforcing the 
adscription to the glebe, but in the fifth century the empire 
completely disintegrated in the West. Yet the colonate did 
not disappear but continued apparently in unabated vigor 
until the Middle Ages. This survival of the colonate 
through these centuries of disorganization could only have 
been posible if the position of the colonus was a relatively 
attractive one. “ Low rents, economic self-government in 
the management of their farms and efficient protection and 
help in case of need, must have been the attractions which 
had more to do with their holding out on the land than 
threats of fines and imprisonment.” * 

{t is unfortunate that Vinogradoff did not develop a com- 
plete theory of the colonate, for his clear vision led him into 
the heart of the problem. The registration of the coloni in 
the tax rolls of the census was, as he said, merely the public 
side of the process of the attachment of the coloni to the 
soil.* At root the colonate was vitally connected with the 
problem of maintaining agriculture in the Empire. Gar- 
sonnet had first called attention to the close relation which 
existed between the emphyteutic and the colonate legislation 
of the late Empire* As Vinogradoff said, this aspect of 


1 Thid., pp. 80-82. 

2 Ibid., p. 79. 

3 Tbid., p. 76. 

* Cf. supra, pp. 132-133. 


200 THE ROMAN COLONATE [200 


the problem had been entirely too much neglected. Just as 
capitalists were invited to invest their capital under exceed- 
ingly attractive conditions in the reclamation of uncultivated 
lands, so the coloni were kept on the soil by inducements of 
equal relative value. 

aa is no doubt that the colonate had this “ meliorative ” 
or ““emphyteutic”” aspect, as Vinogradoff maintained; yet 
it had its compulsory side also, and this was probably even 
more important. Emphyteusis was not the only means em- 
ployed by the government to bring waste lands under culti- 
vation ; émBody, the compulsory addition of deserted land to 
land under cultivation, was even more typical of the spirit 
of the administration. As long as proprietors could be in- 
duced to undertake the cultivation of waste land the govern- 
ment was satisfied with emphyteusis. But when hereditary 
leases, low rents, and remissions of taxes proved insufficient, 
the more drastic principle of émBod# was applied and pro- 
prietors were forced to cultivate deserted lands. Likewise, 
in relation to the development of the colonate, as long as 
the emphyteutic features illustrated by the African regula- 
tions proved sufficient to keep the coloni on their holdings, 
they were regarded as satisfactory by the administration. 
But when the coloni could no longer be retained on the soil 
by inducements and favorable conditions, then force had to 
be applied and the coloni bound to the soil by imperial edict. 

It is true, as Vinogradoff said, that the colonate did not 
disappear, with the collapse of the Empire of the West. Yet 
this does not indicate, as he implied, that force was no longer 
applied to keep the coloni on the soil. The fall of Rome 
was succeeded by political anarchy in western Europe but not 
by complete economic disorganization. The economic and 
political history of the fifth century was largely concerned 
with the growth of patronage. As the central government 
gradually lost control of its constituent parts the local ad- 


taneememieir bes aremes so a 


201] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 201 


ministration passed into the hands of ‘great proprietors or 
military potentates. So far as the coloni were concerned 
the patron took the place of the imperial government and 
if his position was changed at all it was probably for the 
worse, just as was the experience of the coloni on the saltus 
Burunttanus under the conductor Allius Maximus before the 
intervention of Commodus. When the Western Empire 
finally came to an end the power of the patrons over their 
coloni was complete and the colonate gradually sunk into 
medieval serfdom. The meliorative features of the colo- 
nate may have been retained in many districts of the West, 
particularly in the domains of the monasteries where agri- 
culture was most seriously practiced; but the dominating | 
characteristic of the serf-colonate was the compulsory at- 
tachment of the cultivator to the soil.* 


1Cf. Seeck, op. cit., p. 509. De Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum, pp. 
18-40. 

2In 1894, in an article in the Archaecologisch-Epigraphische Mitthei- 
lungen (xvii, 1804, pp. 125-134), “Uber den rémischen Colonat und 
seinen Zusammenhang mit dem Militardienste,”’ Hartmann argued that 
just as the free Italian peasant during the Republic had been forced to 
give place to the slave because of the liability of the former to military 
service, so in the late Empire because of the difficulty of obtaining re- 
cruits and the unavailability of slaves for military service the reverse 
process took place. It was as much an obligation of the proprietors to 
furnish soldiers for the army (Cf. Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 2) as the capita- 
tion tax for the treasury; and possibly the former was as important 
a cause of the legal attachment of the coloni to the soil as the latter. 
(Hartmann, op. cit., pp. 132-134. Cf. Mommsen, Hermes, xxiv (1889), 
p. 242. ‘Das ganze Institut des Colonats beruht darauf, dass der Leib- 
eigene als freier Mann behandelt wird, um ihn zum Eintritt in das Heer 
fahig zu halten.”) 

Hartmann’s suggestion was accepted by Bolkestein (De Colonaty 
Romano ejusque Origine, Amsterdam, 1906, pp. 159-160) as one of the 
causes leading up to the adscription of the coloni. But, in the main, 
Bolkestein followed Seeck in tracing the origin of the colonate to the 
gradual depression of the tenantry on the imperial saltus, because of the 
increasing scarcity of agricultural labor, and their final legal adscription 
in the interests of the treasury. (Jbid., pp. 120-175.) 


CHAPTER VII 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 


Tue African inscriptions had had a great influence in 
molding theories of the colonate since 1880: Before they 
were discovered the gap between the colonus of Columella 
and the Digest and the colonus of the Codes seemed so great 
that most writers felt it necessary to relate the coloni to 
another source, such as barbarian settlements, earlier servile 
tenures, or conditionally emancipated slaves. The unsatis- 
factory character of all these explanations had given rise to 
the theory of administrative pressure, but exponents of that 
school had difficulty in explaining the enormous change in 
condition from the short-term tenant to the serf-colonus and 
in discovering a source which would be adequate to serve as 
the basis of the colonate. Heisterbergk, three years before 
the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis was discovered, advanced 
the theory that the great provincial latifundia were the home 
of the colonate, and the African inscriptions apparently sub- 
stantiated his contention, at least so far as Africa was con- 
cerned. The inscriptions presented a picture of a numerous 
free tenantry cultivating the land under permanent and 
hereditary conditions. They were not serf-coloni, for they 
were not legally bound to the soil, yet they represented a class 
of cultivators from which it seemed that the coloni of the 
Codes might far more easily be derived than from barbarian 
settlers, slaves, or the short-term tenants of the Digest. 

However, the African inscriptions related only to condi- 
tions in Africa. Investigators soon commenced to search 
for evidence of similar conditions in other provinces. A 

202 [202 


203 | THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 203 


few years after the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis was found 
Ramsay discovered a number of early third-century inscrip- 
tions in southeastern Phrygia which came to be known as 
the Ormelian inscriptions. Although these inscriptions were 
far less enlightening than any of the African inscriptions, 
the mention of procuratores (émirpowo.), conductores (pur8wrat), 
actores (mpayporevrai ), and a magister vict (mpodywy) led 
both Ramsay * and Pelham * to maintain that conditions on 
the imperial domains in Asia Minor were substantially simi- 
lar to those in Africa. Likewise in 1897 a study of some 
recently discovered Egyptian papyri brought Paul Meyer to 
the opinion that conditions on the African domains were 
closely paralleled by those on the catoecic land (9 xarouxxy) in 
Egypt.* The catoecic land was state land granted to Greek 
or Roman soldiers and their descendants for which they paid 
a moderate rent and which they frequently sublet to the 
native peasantry. While the position of the tenants on state 
land (8ypdcw yewpyet) was rather favorable as late as the 
third century, the catoecic peasants (yewpyol KAjpov KaroiKixed ) 
had fallen into a condition of decided dependence by the 
second century. The lower status of the latter Meyer be- 
lieved was due to the fact that they were only sub-tenants 
while the state peasants were direct tenants of the crown. 
Like the African coloni of the same period the catoecic 
tenants in Egypt had the essential characteristics of the serf- 
coloni, Meyer held. In fact not only were the serf-tenants 
similar to the African coloni but their landlords, the xaro:xor, 
corresponded very closely to the conductores of the African 
domains.* Four second-century papyri indicated in general 

1 The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, London, 1890, pp. 173-176; 
The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, Oxiord, 1895, pp. 280-284. 

2 Cf. supra, p. 165. 

5 Philologus, |vi (1897), pp. 201-205. 

* Tbid., p. 207. 


204 THE ROMAN COLONATE [204 


the terms of the leases on catoecic land.* In accordance with 
these leases the catoecic peasants paid share rent, furnished. 
their own seed, and agreed to perform all the necessary work 
to keep their tenancies in good condition. The imperial 
vectigal (ra dyueow) was paid by the xaroxes himself and 
not the yewpyes, just as in Africa it was the conductor who 
paid the vectigal, and in the late Empire it was the proprietor 
of the servile colonus. The principal difference between the 
yeopyo: on catoecic land and the coloni of the fourth century 
lay in the fact that the yewpyot had no claim to the land after 
the expiration of their leases and must leave unless the land 
was re-leased.? 

The analogy which Meyer drew between conditions on 
catoecic land in Egypt and the African domains was not very 
favorably received by other Egyptologists. Rostovtzeff con- 
tended that there was nothing at all in common between the 
xaroxos and the African conductores? The xéroxa paid 
share rent to the government like the coloni, rather than a 
money rent like the conductores. The coloni in Africa were 
obligated to perform certain operae on the demesne, while 
the catoecic peasants had no such obligation. Although the 
sub-tenants of the xdroxe probably paid a higher rent than 
the tenants on the state land, legally their condition was the 
same as that of the Syudor yewpyoi, that of free tenants hold- 
ing leases.*| Mayence likewise added his criticism to that of 
Rostovtzeff. Although the papyri cited by Meyer showed 
that the catoecic peasants paid rent in shares like the African 
coloni and the coloni of the Codes, yet they also indicated 
that they were short-term tenants and hence neither bound 


1B. G. U., 390 (185-186 A. D.); 227. (150-151 Ai: D.)isG) Poe ot 
(154 A. D.) ; 240 (126 A. D.) 

2 Ibid., p. 204. 

> Philologus, vii (1898), pp. 572-573, note 13. 

* Tbid., loc. cit. and p. 570. 


205 | THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 205 


to the soil like the servile coloni nor perpetual tenants like 
the coloni in Africa. Lacking these essential characteristics 
Mayence maintained that the conditions on catoecic land can- 
not be said to lead to the colonate of the Codes.’ 

Mitteis, like Rostovtzeff, had criticised Meyer for regard- 
ing the xdrowos as the Egyptian counterpart of the African 
conductor,” but in a later work he returned to the theory that 
Egypt was the “classic land of the colonate’’ where the 
oldest traces of dependence of the peasantry in the Roman 
Empire were to be found.* While the Egyptian papyri did 
not definitely state that the peasants were in a semi-servile 
condition, yet they at least indicated such a conclusion, 
Mitteis maintained. In the. first place there was the 
wevOnpepia, the five days’ services on the canals and irrigation 
ditches, which were required of the peasants of the Fayum 
district. Then .a third-century papyrus in the British 
Museum referred to the removal of twelve peasants from 
one village to another.* If the government was in the habit 
of transferring peasants from one village to another Mitteis 
contended that it certainly must have the power to compel 
them to stay in their native villages if it so desired. Even 
in the first century there had been a tendency on the part of 
the provincial administration to force men to lease public 
lands. “For I am well aware” said the prefect Tiberius 
Julius Alexander in his edict of 68 A. D., “that your re- 
monstrance is most reasonable that men should not be forced 
against their will to take up tax-farming contracts or other 


1T,¢ musée belge, vi (1902), pp. 91-93. 

* Hermes, xxxii (1807), p. 657, note 2. ) 

> Mitteis, Aus des griechischen Papyrusurkunden (Leipzig, 1900), 
pp. 31-32, “ Dagegen beginnt Aegypten...sich nachgerade als ein clas- 
sischer Boden des Colonats herauszustellen. Wir finden hier jetzt die 
altesten sicheren Spuren der bauerlichen Unfreiheit im r6émischen Reich.” 


* P. Lond., ii, 322 (214-215 A. D.). 


206 THE ROMAN COLONATE [206 


property leases (4% @dAas pioGdoes évewxds) contrary to the 
common custom of the provinces.” * Finally, this same 
policy of government control of the peasantry can be seen 
in a papyrus of the second century B. C.” in which reference 
was made to the compulsory sowing of the royal lands re- 
quired of certain peasants.® 

In the meantime a new inscription had been discovered in 
Asia Minor which was published by Haussoullier in 1901 
in the Revue de Philologie* The inscription was of the 
year 256 B. C. and concerned the purchase of the village of 
Pannos by the Seleucid queen, Laodice. The queen not only 
obtained control over all the peasantry (Aeo) then living in 
the village and their rents, but “equally,” the inscription 
satd, ““in the case of the peasants of the village who have 
gone into other locahties, if they are not obligated to the 
royal treasury, those also she will have the right to attach to 
a city state if she wishes.” *® This inscription, notwithstand- 
ing its early date, had an important influence in forming a 
new theory of the colonate which was presented by Ros- 
tovtzeff in 1901.° | 

In recent years, said Rostovtzeff, two particular elements 


1 Rheinische. Museum fiir Philologie, ii (1828), p. 147, lines 10-11. 
‘““"Eyvwv yap apo mavTo¢ ebAoyworaryy otoav tin évreviiw imen dTép TED py 
Gxovrac avOporouc sic TeAwveiac 7 aAAag picbdceic ovoLaKd¢g Tapa TO Kooy efor 
Tov erapyiov mpoc Biav ayecba,’’ But as the Edict was addressed to 
Alexandrian proprietors the forced Jeases in question concerned them 
rather than the peasants, as Mitteits supposed. Cf. supra, pp. 35-36. 

oi Ore Oz. 

* Mitteis, op. cit., p. 32. 

* Revue de Philologie, xxv (1901), pp. 9-12. 

5 Jbid., p. 9, lines 7-10. ‘‘ dpoiwe dé Kai ci tives Ex THE KOUNE TadTHC dvTeC 
Aaoi pereAnribacw sig GAAove térove ép’ Ge odOiv amoTEdeiv sic TO Baoidixdy, wat 
nupia sora mpoodepopivy mpo¢ méAw hv dv BovAnrat,”? 

*“Der Ursprung des Kolonats,” Beitraége zur alten Geschichte, i 
(1901), pp. 205-299. 


207] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 207 


had been stressed in explaining the historical development 
of the colonate.. The first was the attachment of the coloni 
to the soil on the imperial domains as a matter of custom 
and habit before it became legal adscription. The second 
was the close relation of this gradual attachment to the soil 
to the extra-municipal character of the estates of the crown; 
for the colonate had developed almost exclusively on the 
tax-exempt territories of the salius.1 Most writers had re- 
garded the adscription to the glebe and the extra-municipal 
character of the domains as pure Roman products which 
developed first in Italy and Africa and then spread to the 
East. But, Rostovtzeff contended, it is better to look for 
these roots of the colonate in the cultured Hellenistic East 
rather than in the West; and since an extra-municipal 
domanial policy could hardly have developed in city-less 
Egypt, the real home of the colonate may well have been the 
kingdom of the Seleucids in Asia Minor.’ 

The Laodice inscription referred to above showed that 
the essential features of the imperial policy, as seen in the 
African domains; existed in Asia Minor in the third century 
B. C. on the domains of Seleucids. Like the African do 
mains the lands purchased by Laodice were under no munici- 
pal control, the peasants were bound to the soil, and were 
tenants of the crown rather than small proprietors. Ap- 
parently then, Rostovtzeff argued, we have evidence of a 
continuous development of the colonate on royal domains 
from the very earliest times. The domains of the monarchs 
of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and their predecessors were 
inherited by the Persian kings; the Persian domains fell into 
the hands of the Hellenistic rulers; and finally with the 
Roman conquest the domains. became first ager publicus and 


1Tbid., p. 295. “Der Kolonat hat sich fast ausschliesslich auf den 
eximierten Territorien der saltus entwickelt.” 


2 Thid., p. 206. 


208 THE ROMAN COLONATE [208 


later the estates of the emperor. But the peasants who culti- 
vated these lands probably changed little with the change of 
overlords. As coloni bound to the soil they appear in the 
Laodice inscription, our earliest source of information, and 
coloni bound to the soil they remained." The Romans 
not only retained the domanial organization of the Hellen- 
istic monarchs and their predecessors in the East, but they 
used it as the model for the organization of their imperial 


domains in the West. Hence the emperor’s provincial es- 


tates, instead of being formed after the Italian municipal 
system, were organized on the basis of the extra-municipal 
domains of the East. So far as the cultivators were con- 
cerned it was not at first the intention of the emperors to 
import the Eastern colonate into the West, for they wished 
to revive a small farmer class if possible. But in time the 
colonate became necessary and when that time came the East 
furnished the model after which it was organized. “ Hence 
the rebirth of the never dead colonate bound to the soil.” * 
In the same year Meyer returned to the championship of 
Egypt as the home of the colonate.* The Laodice inscrip- 
tion, he said, presented a picture of a dependent peasantry 
in Asia Minor, but the Aaot were not completely bound to the 
soil for many of them left the village of Pannos to avoid 
paying taxes. Yet, since the inscription said that the queen 
had the right to re-attach them to the village, it 1s evident 
that legally they were still regarded as belonging to the dis- 
trict in which they were born. This same principle of at- 
tachment to the place of one’s birth, or id as it was called, 
was present in Egypt, as numerous papyri testify. At first 


1 Thid., pp. 297-208. 

* [bid., p. 200. “So geschah die Wiedergeburt das nie gestorben, an die 
Scholle gebundenen Kolonats.” 

*“Zum Ursprung des Kolonats,” Beitriige sur alten Geschichte, i 
(1901), pp. 424-426. 


209] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 209 


iSta, stated that it was beyond doubt one of the roots of the 
taxes and services. But as time went on the peasant came 
to be tied more and more closely to his place of origin until 
finally he was not allowed to leave under any pretext... The 
final adscriptio glebae was really nothing more than a further 
development of the ancient principle of id. In Asia Minor, 
as Rostovtzeff argued, the colonate may first have developed 
on the great extra-municipal domains of the crown. But 
lack of such an organization in Egypt did not prevent, as 
Rostovtzeff supposed, a native development of the colonate 
in Egypt.” 

The principle of i8@, to which Meyer had called attention, 
was indeed an important one. A few years later De Zu- 
lueta, who had collected a number of new texts bearing on 
idia, stated that it was beyond doubt one of the roots of the 
colonate.* And Rostovtzeff himself was finally so con- 
vinced of its importance that in the restatement of his theory, 
which appeared in 1910 in his Studien zur Geschichte des 
romischen Kolonates, his attention was largely shifted from 
Asia Minor to Egypt 

The historical development of the colonate was a highly 
complicated one, said Rostovtzeff, and cannot be understood 
simply from the material available from Italian and African 
sources. It developed differently in each province of the 
Empire, and the local provincial differences were so strong 
that even the harmonizing policy of the imperial adminis- 
tration was unable to introduce a uniform development in 
different parts of the Empire. In the Hellenistic lands of 
the East a dependent state peasantry was to be found which 


1 Cod. Theod., xi, 24, 6, 3 (415 A. D.). “Hi sane, qui vicis quibus 
adscripti sunt derelictis....ad alios seu vicos seu dominos transierunt, ad 
sedem desolati ruris constrictis detentatoribus redire cogantur.” 


2 Meyer, op. cit., p. 425. 
3 De Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum (Oxford, 1909), pp. 42-43. 


210 THE ROMAN COLONATE [210 


apparently went back to the earliest historical times; in the 
West, on the other hand, a free tenant class was equally 
discernible. Most writers had regarded the historical evo- 
lution of the Western tenantry as the dominant factor in 
the development of the colonate as a universal institution of 
the late Empire, while the influence of the East had been 
overlooked. But so far as one part of the Roman world 
affected other parts, it was the influence of the East which 
was paramount. The experience of ages of civilization was 
to be learned there and as the Roman emperors found it 
increasingly difficult to maintain prosperity in a decaying 
Empire, the economic policy of their Eastern predecessors 
was imitated again and again. Especially important was the 
influence of the régime of the Ptolemies in Egypt. They 
had found Egypt in a deplorable condition after the misrule 
of its Assyrian and Persian overlords, but through their 
careful policy of exploitation of the natural resources of the 
country they had restored Egypt to her ancient prosperity 
and made it the garden spot of the world. The methods 
employed by these Hellenistic monarchs with so much success 
in Egypt beyond doubt had a strong influence in forming 
the Roman imperial policy when the resources of the Empire 
began to decline and great stretches of deserted land com- 
menced to appear.* 

In Egypt in the Ptolmaic period all land belonged to the 
king, but it was divided into two main categories, royal land 
(yj Baotttxy), which was directly administered by royal 
officials, and land under grant (yf évddéon). The chief 
kinds of land under grant were the old temple land (yf tepd), 
which was little disturbed from the time of the Pharoahs, 
and two new categories, land granted to Greek veterans. 


1 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. v-vii; art. “ Kolonat” in Conrad’s Handw. di. 
Staatsw., v, Pp. 913, 919; Univ. of Wis. Stud. in Soc. Sci., vi (1922),. 
PP. 3-4. 


Ort THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 2II 


known as cleruchic land (yf xAnpovyixy), and private lease- 
holds (yf iSiexryros or xrjata). Much of the cleruchic and 
private land was dry land (yf xépcos) and was granted 
on terms which were very similar to the later Roman em- 
phyteusis. The grant of land included the duty of cultiva- 
tion, the taxes were lower there than elsewhere, and while 
the granted land was originally held in precarious tenure it 
tended to become hereditary like the Roman emphyteutic 
land.* By emphyteutic grants of land the Ptolemies were 
able to keep much of the less valuable land in cultivation. 
But where encouragements failed coercion could be applied. 
Peasants could be compelled to cultivate the deserted fields, 
or the gleba inutilis could be forcibly added to the possessions 
of an owner of fertile land just as in the case of the éiBorr 
practice of the late Roman Empire.’ 

Most of the fertile Egyptian land was included in the 
royal land which was cultivated by small tenants known as 
royal peasants (Bacwrrxot yewpyot or Aaot) under the close 
supervision of a hierarchy of state officials. They held their 
land according to the terms of a precarious lease which ap- 
parently could be revoked or changed at the pleasure or con- 
venience of the administration. The peasants had no 
choice but to accept the terms which the government saw 
fit to grant them. In case the conditions of their tenure 
became unbearably oppressive the peasants occasionally or- 
ganized a strike (dvaxépyois) and withdrew in a body to a 
temple where they were under the protection of the gods 
and could not be molested.* They were excluded from the 
courts, all their disputes being settled by the royal officials 


1 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 7-11, 15-17, 30-31, 40-41. 

2 Ibid., pp. 53-58. Cf., De Zulueta, op. cit., p. 70. 

3 Rostowzew, op. cit., p. 51. 

4 Rostowzew, Joc. cit., and p. 74; Univ. of Wis. Stud. in Soc. Sct, 
vi (1922), pp. 75-76, 80-81. 


212 THE ROMAN COLONATE [212 


set over them. In fact their whole life was regulated to the 
minutest detail by the official bureaucracy charged with the 
administration of the crown land.* 

Were the royal peasants of the Ptolemaic period serfs? 
Rostovtzeff doubted it but believed that they retained in their 
dependent condition many vestiges of an earlier pre-Ptole- 
maic serfdom. The forced precarious lease which they held, 
the complete control which the royal officials exercised over 
them, the heavy public services on the canals and in the 
mines and galleys which the government could exact, and 
above all the principle of i&% by which the peasant could 
always be recalled to his native village for his obligations to 
the government—all these pointed to an earlier servile status, 
Rostovtzeff maintained.* As for the peasants on the granted 
land, who were the sub-tenants of the priests, the cleruchs, 
and the private lessees, their condition differed little from 
that of the crown peasants. Probably their rents were 
higher and their economic condition somewhat lower than 
that of the Baowrtxoi yewpyot. But the latter were under much 
closer supervision by the state officials and the principle of 
i8f2 was more strictly enforced in regard to them. They 
were a kind of aristocracy of agricultural labor, but at the 
same time they were the most dependent class of the Egyp- 
tian peasantry.* 

The Roman conquest did not introduce any revolutionary 
changes in the agricultural conditions of Egypt. For the 
most part the Roman administrators built on foundations 
already laid by their Hellenistic predecessors. Like the 
Hellenistic, the Roman system of exploitation was partly a 


1 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 68-70. 

2 Tbid., pp. 75-76. 

3 [bid., p. 83. “Die Konigsbauern...scheiden damit aus der tbrigen 
Bevolkerung Agyptens aus, indem sie als nahere Untertanen behandelt 
werden, eine Art Aristokratie und zugleich etwas den Leibeigenen 


4 99 
L 


Ahnliches unter den iibrigen dgyptischen Aao/, 


213] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 213 


policy of encouragement and partly a policy of force. Under 
the Ptolemies no land had been sold outright but land which 
was not directly administered by the government was leased 
in grants of different types. The Romans, however, thought 
that in many cases privately owned land might be more 
productive in the way of taxes than leased land, so unculti- 
vated land was offered for sale at low prices with a remis- 
sion of taxes for three years.t Likewise the land which 
had been granted to foreign soldiers and their descendants 
(yf KAnpovxLKH or YH KaToiKiKy) Was in many cases changed from 
a status of an hereditary leasehold to full possession. The 
emphyteutic lease also was largely extended, complete free- 
dom from rent being granted for five years and a reduction 
in the rent being allowed for three additional years, while 
great care was taken to see that the emphyteuta fulfilled his 
contract by keeping up the constant cultivation of the land.° 
But the chief policy applied by the Roman administration 
in maintaining the cultivation of the fields was “the iron 
yoke of force.’* Property holders were burdened with 
compulsory leases and émPorAy, while from the peasantry 
many additional corvées were demanded. If they attempted 
to leave their villages the old principle of i&a was applied 
and they were brought back to their native districts.” 

The mass of the agricultural population of Roman Egypt 
was composed of the state peasants (8nudoin yewpyd.) who 
corresponded to the royal peasants (PaewArxol yewpydt) of the 
Ptolemies. Like their predecessors the state peasants held 
leases of indeterminate length which could be canceled or 


1Tbid., p. 97. 

3 [bid., p. 112. 

3 Tbid., pp. 108-11. 

4 Ibid., p. 193. ‘“‘ Neben diesem freieren Zuge weht aber als Hauptzug 
dere eiserne Zug des Zwanges.” 

5 Ibid., pp. 193-205. 


214 THE ROMAN COLONATE [214 


altered at the pleasure of the government.* Although they 
were not hereditary tenants they had considerable rights 
over their tenancies as long as their leases remained in force. 
They could sublet parts of their land to others, they could 
divide the parcels up with other members of the community, 
and they could even go so far as to use the land which they 
cultivated as a pledge for their debts.” On their part they 
agreed to irrigate the land and keep it in cultivation. The 
government furnished them with seed but they obligated 
themselves to pay it back at harvest, together with their 
taxes and rents in kind; although in case the Nile failed to 
overflow they were granted a reduction in their rent.* 
Other obligations, such as work on the canals and dams, the 
forced cultivation of deserted land, and the duty to remain in 
their idta were not included in the contracts of the Roman 
period which have come down to us and apparently were 
enforced by other means. The most important of these 
obligations was the practice of ida. “Ida, however, did not 
imply that the peasants were bound to the soil, for papyri 
give examples of peasants leasing the land of neighboring 
villages and even of making their homes away from the 
village of their nativity.* The principle of iia meant that 
the peasant was regarded as belonging to the village oa 
whose tax rolls he was registered. The whole community 
of peasants registered in the tax rolls of any particular 
village was held responsible for the taxes of each constituent 
member. <A peasant might be living in another village, but 
his taxes were paid to his native village, not to the village 
of his domicile.* But it is not likely, Rostovtzeff held, that 


1 Tbid., pp. 160-161, 164. 
2 Tbid., p. 161. 

3 Tbid., pp. 165, 216. 

4 [bid., pp. 156, 212. 


5 [bid., pp. 157, 212. The tax registration of Joseph of Nazareth at 
Bethlehem (Luke ii, 3-4) is the most familiar example of this practice. 


215 | THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 215 


the peasants were free to move away from their native dis- 
trict on their own free initiative for the examples which have 
come down to us of state tenants living away from their 
native homes were probably peasants who were moved at 
the discretion of the government from districts where agri- 
cultural labor was plentiful to the districts where it was 
scarce.” , 

Besides the state tenants there was another class of peas- 
antry who sublet the land of the large lessees on the less 
valuable land. These sub-tenants (izouicOwrai) held very 
short-term leases but as time went on their condition became 
progressively worse as their heavy obligations and the poor 
quality of the land kept them continually in arrears.” Like- 
wise the small private possessors (xrjropes) who had formed 
a kind of middle agricultural class in the first century of 
the Roman rule, were sinking rapidly into a condition very 
similar to that of the state peasantry and the sub-tenants. 
The pressure of government liturgies, forced leases, and 
émiBodky put them as thoroughly under the control of the 
government as if they were tenants of the state. Finally iS 
affected them also and in time their condition became in- 
distinguishable from that of the state peasantry. 

How the serf-colonate of the late Roman Empire de- 
veloped in Egypt, Rostovtzeff admitted was a problem which 
cannot be fully solved with our present inadequate state of 
information in regard to Egypt; yet he felt that the main 
lines of development were clear. The constant pressure of 
government liturgies and taxes led to desertion of the land. 
Valiant efforts were made by the government to reclaim the 
land by forced leases and émPory, but the additional burdens 


1 Tbid., p. 212. 
? Tbid., pp. 184-186, 191. 
5 [bid., p. 226. 


216 THE ROMAN COLONATE [216 


merely made conditions harder for the remaining agricul- 
tural population and desertion continued and increased. The 
old principle of idéa was then applied more and more strin- 
gently to keep the peasant from leaving his native district 
and this finally resulted in absolute servile bondage. “ But 
it must be always kept in mind,” said Rostovtzeff, “ that the 
foundations of the late colonate were laid by the state and 
that the state-colonate had always existed in Egypt and in 
its essential features remained ever the same.” ? 

The development of the colonate in other Hellenistic lands 
was in general similar to its development in Egypt and pos- 
sibly was strongly affected by Egyptian influences. The 
first Hellenistic country with which Rome came in close 
contact was Sicily. When Rome conquered Sicily it found 
the fiscal policy of the island governed by the lex Hieromca 
of the Syracusan king Hiero Il. This law, which per- 
haps formulated after the model of the Revenue Laws of 
Ptolemy Philadelphus,? regulated the payment of a grain 
tithe (8exérn) to the state from all the peasants in the island, 
whether they were tenants of the royal domains or of city 
territories. The tithes were collected not by royal officials 
but were leased to tax farmers, and Rostovtzeff held that 
the Roman system of tax farming, both in Sicily and other 
provinces, could be traced to the Jer Hteronica as its origin, 
which in turn had been patterned after earlier Greek and 
Hellenistic models in the East. As for the tribute-paying 
peasants themselves, they became colom populi Romam atque 


1Tbid., pp. 225, 227. 
2 Ibid., p. 228. “Er wird aber immer im Auge behalten miissen, dass 
die Grundlagen fiir den Kolonat der Spatzeit vom Staate gelegt wurden 


und dass der Staatskolonat in Agypten immer da war und in seinen 
Grundziigen immer derselbe blieb.” 


3 Tbid., p. 233. 
4 Tbid., pp. 235, 237. 


217] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 217 


aratores, but aside from the change of masters, their condi- 
tion remained much the same as it had been before. In 
fact the incorporation of Sicily as a province in the Roman 
state affected the Romans themselves more than it did the 
Sicilians for it introduced into the Roman administrative 
structure the leaven of Hellenism which was destined to 
modify it completely.’ 

We have no records of the agricultural legislation in 
Macedonia previous to the Roman conquest, but Rostov- 
tzeff believed that here as in Sicily Rome merely took over 
the existing system as it had been developed, substituting 
her suzerainty for that of the Macedonian kings.*? In regard 
to Asia Minor, fortunately the sources, although scanty, 
are sufficient to indicate in general what the agricultural 
conditions were both before and after the Roman conquest. 
In many respects the situation in Hellenistic Asia Minor was 
strikingly similar to that in Hellenistic Egypt, but it differed 
in one important point: in Egypt all land belonged to the 
king while in Asia Minor there was a strong contrast be- 
tween the city territory and the royal domain.” The royal 
domain (x#pa Bacwsuxy) was very large in extent, and it was 
the source of the major part of the revenue of the Seleucids.° 
The royal domain was cultivated by crown peasants (Aaoi 
Baowrixet) who paid taxes sometimes in money but more 
frequently in kind like the Sicilian tithes. The Laodice in- 
scription of the third century B. C. showed that the peasants 
while not bound to the soil were held to their idia like the 
crown peasants of Egypt.* On the city domains, the city 


1Cic., In Verr., ii, 3, 228. 

2 Rostowzew, op. cit., pp. 230, 232. 

3 Ibid., p. 230. 

4 Ibid., p. 231. 

5 Tbid., p. 247. 

6 Ibid., p. 258. Cf. supra, pp. 206-208. Rostovtzeff had earlier stated that 


Blo THE ROMAN COLONATE [218 


peasants (mdpoxor) had probably originally been serfs like 
the Helots of Sparta or the Penestes of Thessaly.* Like- 
wise the temple lands of Asia Minor previous to the Greek 
conquest had been cultivated by hierodules or temple serfs. 
But by the time of the Seleucids the peasantry on the city 
estates were practically in the same position as the crown 
peasants. Inscriptions show that the city peasants lived in 
small villages where they enjoyed a certain amount of self 
government and might even possess land in common.’ 
Probably the same community organization existed on the 
royal domain, although of this we have no certain records. 
The emphyteutic lease was also commonly granted on city 
land and probably also on the crown estates just as in Egypt.® 

After the Roman conquest most of the land of Asia Minor 
became first ager publicus and later imperial domains; but 
the economic and social condition of the peasantry was little 
affected by the change of masters. The picture presented 
by the Laodice inscription of the third century B. C. might 
very well fit the situation on imperial domains as described 
by inscriptions of the third century A. D* The peasantry 
continued to live in little agricultural villages called ‘‘ com- 
munities ’’ (xowé) which, as in earlier times, had a certain 
amount of self-government. If an estate was sold or given 
away the tenants cultivating the land were included just as 
in the Laodice inscription. They owed rents and taxes 


the Aaoi_ sind an die Scholle Gebundene” (Beitr. z. alt. Gesch. i (1901), 
p. 297) but in his Studien he had evidently accepted the criticism of Meyer 
that the condition of the Aaol was simply ‘‘ die Gebundenheit an die ‘dia,’’ 


(Ibid., p. 424.) 

1 Rostowzew, Studien, p. 259. 

2 Tbid., pp. 262-263. 

3 Tbid., pp. 266-267. 

*Conrad’s Handw. d. Staatsw., art. “ Kolonat,” vol. v, p. 916. Studien, 
PP. 300, 304. 


219] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 219 


which were collected by tax farmers as in Sicily, but whether 
these were payable in kind or in money we have no informa- 
tion. At the head of the administration of the imperial 
domains was a hierarchy of imperial officers who oppressed 
the peasantry with many burdensome services.t The peas- 
antry sometimes complained, like the coloni of the saltus 
Burunttanus, and at other times they fled; and as in Egypt 
this was checked by the enforcement of i8%@. However, 
there is no evidence of legal attachment to the soil, although 
departure from one’s ancestral home must have been looked 
upon as something abnormal.’ 

In Hellenistic lands the condition of the agricultural pop- 
ulation had been little disturbed by the Roman conquest. In 
Africa, however, Rostovtzeff believed that the Roman occu- 
pation created more of a break with previous conditions. 
Nothing definite is known about the state of the African 
peasantry under the Carthaginian rule but Rostovtzeff 
thought it not unlikely that the peasants were state tenants 
like the natives of regions conquered and colonized by the 
Greeks.* The addition of the fertile African province to 
the Roman dominions caused a considerable. Italian emigra- 
tion both of peasant colonists and capitalists to Africa.* 
Enormous latifundia developed which Rostovtzeff believed 
were first worked by slaves as in Italy. But slaves were 
difficult to obtain in competition with Italy and as slavery 
was not well adapted to wheat culture it soon disappeared 
and was succeeded by a small tenant system, composed partly 


1 Studien, pp. 302-304. 

2 Thid., p. 305. 

3 Tbid., p. 314. 

In a recent article, “A Great Agricultural Emigration from Italy,” 
Jour. Rom. Studies, 1918, pp. 34-52, Heitland criticises Rostovtzeft’s 
‘assumptions and denies that Italy furnished any considerable number of 


xolonists to Africa. 


220 THE ROMAN COLONATE [220 


of Italian immigrants and partly of natives.» Thus at the 
time of the great confiscation of Nero a tenant class of con- — 
siderable proportions was developing in Africa whose status 
was determined partly by pre-Roman agricultural traditions 
and partly by the customs which the Roman colonists and 
landlords had brought with them from Italy.” However, 
with the introduction of the great imperial laws, the lex 
Manciana, which Rostovtzeff regarded as the work of Ves- 
pasian,® and the lex Hadriana, another influence was brought 
to bear upon the peasantry which in time was to have a con- 
siderable effect on their development. This was the in- 
fluence of Hellenism as it worked through the medium of the 
Roman imperial administration.* ‘Schulten had already ad- 
vanced the hypothesis that the Roman emperors had been 
strongly influenced by the policy of the Hellenistic kings of 
Egypt, Asia Minor, and Sicily in organizing their private 
domains. Both the emphyteutic features of the ley Man- 
ciana and the lex Hadriana and the share-rent system he 
held were of Greek rather than Italian origin.’ Rostovtzeff, 
who was far better acquainted with the Hellenistic sources 
than Schulten, found many more analogies between the im- 
perial regulations governing the African domains and the 
practices of the East. The aim of the policy of the more 
far-sighted emperors, he maintained, was to develop a pros- 
perous class of state peasants like the Hellenistic +yewpyot 
Bao.rixoi,* while the model for domanial regulations such as 
the lex Manciana and lex Hadriana was the Hellenistic 
revenue laws (vouo redwnxol). It would have been foolish,. 


1 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 318-310, 339. 

2 Tbid., p. 340. 

3 Ibid., pp. 323-329. Cf. supra, p. 178, n. 3. 

‘ Toid., p. 353. 

®Schulten, Abhandl. d. Gott. Ges. d. Wiss., Philol.-Histor. Kl. it 
(1897), pp. 46-47. 

® Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 339, 352. 


221] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 221 


said Rostovtzeff, for the emperors to cast aside the ex- 
perience of centuries in order to create a new system of 
domanial administration. The general economic and social 
conditions were the same, and legislators and officials alike 
made the fullest use of Hellenistic practices, adapting them 
to the particular situation in the province.» The provisions 
in the African regulations for setting out grapes, olives, 
and figs were very similar to the Egyptian rules for planting 
garden land (xarapvrevois).? The method of determining the 
share of the crop which was to go as rent was in most re- 
spects like that of the earlier Egyptian and Sicilian prac- 
tices. The share-rent system, the rigid administrative 
control exercised by the government officials, the minute 
details with which the economic life of the coloni was reg- 
ulated, the application of general regulations to individual 
estates, the community life in the villages—all point to a 
development in the African domains similar to conditions 
in the Hellenistic lands of the East.* The beginnings of 
émiBody or 1unctio were discernible in the lex Hadriana, which 
opened for occupation uncultivated lands “which were in 
those parts of the saltus Blandianus and Udensts which were 
joined (1unctae) to the saltus Thusdritanus.”° The rule of 


‘1 [bid., pp. 370, 380. 

2 Tbid., pp. 350-351. 

3 Tbid., pp. 365-368. 

* Tbid., pp. 369-370. 

5 Bruns, Fontes, 7th ed., no. 116, ii, 8-13, “ Potestas fit omnibus e(tia)m 
eas partes occupandi quae in centuris elocatis saltus Blandiani et Udensis 
et in illis partibus sunt quae ex saltu Lamiano et Dom(1)ttano tunctae 
Thusdritano sunt nec a conductoribus exercentur.” Schulten (Hermes, 
xxix (1894), p. 219) had been the first to advance the somewhat adven- 
turous opinion that the iunctio of certain uncultivated fields of the saltus 
Blandianus and Udensis to the saltus Thusdritanus was an example of 
éx1Bo0An which preceded the legislation in the Codes by two centuries. The 
conclusion is not impossible but Rostovtzeff is hardly justified in calling 
the iunctio in question “ein sicheres Beispiel, und zwar das im Westen 
fritheste, der spateren émBod7.” (Studien, p. 348.) 


222 THE ROMAN COLONATE [222 


i8ta is also seen in the regulation that the colonus must dwell 
on the salius in order to enjoy the full rights of his tenure, 
including the privilege of reclaiming waste land.* Finally 
the numerous strikes of the Egyptian peasants against the 
oppression of the officials had its counterpart in the revolt 
of the cotoni of the saltus Burumtanus which had to be 
quelled by imperial troops.” In fact, concluded Rostovtzeff, 
the African inscriptions show that the coloni of the African. 
saltus possessed all the essential characteristics of the state 
peasantry of Egypt and Asia Minor.® 

As the colonate ‘was the creation of the imperial law 
strongly affected by Hellenistic influences, Rostovtzeff held 
that the evolution of the peasant classes in Italy, where the 
Roman city law remained in force, was not as significant as 
the contemporaneous evolution in the provinces.* The con- 
dition of the coloni in the last century of the Republic and in 
the beginning of the Empire is not exactly known. They 
were regarded as short-term lessees by the agricultural 
writers and the jurists, but probably on the great estates 
they were more like the state peasants of the East where 
the conditions were dictated by the proprietor and accepted 
without question by the coloni. The fact that they were 
lumped together with slaves and freedmen by large land- 
holders like Catiline and Domitius Ahenobarbus ° indicates 
that the condition of all parts of the agricultural population 


1 Jbid., pp. 370-371. This was true in the case of the lex Manciana 
which granted holdings in the swbcesiva to those who dwelt “intra fundo 
Villae Magnae Variani.” Cf. supra, p. 175. But the lex Hadriana did 
not limit the squatter rights to coloni of the estates but granted them “ta 
all” (omnibus) as is seen in the passage just quoted. 

2 Tbid., p. 374. 

5 Ibid., p. 375. 

* Rostowzew, art. “ Kolonat,” in Conrad’s Handw. d. Staatsw., vol. v, 
pp. 917-918. 

5 Cf. supra, p. 153. 


223 | THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 223 


was much the same, the slaves and freedmen holding servile 
tenures and the coloni being tied by the bonds of clientage 
to the person and the estate of the landlord. In the second 
and third centuries the few references at our disposal point 
to a development of the tenantry in the direction of the 
state peasantry of the provinces. Share-rent became more 
common, the tendency toward long leases became marked, 
while everywhere the coloni seemed to be sinking in debt and 
great stretches of land were absolutely deserted. Finally 
with the introduction of the land tax into Italy, in the third 
century, the same problems of administration of taxation 
confronted the emperors as obtained in the provinces.’ 

In the first and second centuries the object of the imperial 
agrarian policy had been to establish a prosperous class of 
imperial tenant farmers in the West after the model of the 
state peasantry of the East. As direct relations as possible 
between the emperor and his tenants were maintained while 
encroachments of the middlemen, the conductores and pro- 
curatores, were checked by regulations like the ler Had- 
riana which the coloni with good reason inscribed in bronze 
and on altars in honor of the emperor.” But the various 
means adopted to develop a sturdy agricultural class and to 
encourage the cultivation of the land were not sufficient to 
check the decline of the Roman Empire which assumed 
menacing proportions in the third century. The fundamen- 
tal weakness of the Roman state lay in the fact that its 
political expansion had been greater than its economic and 
cultural development.* Italy drained herself of her own 
strength in sending out soldiers and colonists in the vain 
effort to Romanize the provinces. With Italy exhausted, 
‘the centrifugal force of the heterogeneous elements in the 


1 Rostowzew, op. cit., pp. 917-918. 
2 Ibid., p. 918; Studien, pp. 370, 380-381. 
3 Studien, p. 388. 


224 THE ROMAN COLONATE [224 


Empire was enormous, and artificial factors such as walls, 
fortifications, armies, and huge corps of administrative offi- 
cials had to serve as the sole cohesive forces. To maintain 
these a large revenue was needed and consequently in the late 
Empire every policy had to be subordinated to the supreme 
need of raising taxes; and as taxes were largely derived from 
the land it became vitally necessary to prevent further deser- 
tion of the soil and to increase as far as possible the amount 
of land under cultivation." Since the policy of dealing 
directly with the peasantry had not succeeded in preventing 
the decline in production, attention was shifted to the wealthy 
city senators (decuriones) and the lessees of large tracts of 
imperial land (conductores) who now became the last ‘“ hope 
of a tottering empire.” * 

- Just as Hellenistic practices were utilized in the develop- 
ment of a state peasantry in the West, so they were likewise 
found available in the treatment of the wealthy landholders. 
Various types of long, perpetual, and emphyteutic leases 
which had previously been common in Egypt took the place 
of the Italian five-year lease.* *Exifody, an Egyptian practice 
since Ptolemaic times, was applied by the Romans every- 
where throughout the Empire.* The old Hellenistic custom 
of making property holders responsible with their total 
wealth for the taxes and liturgies of their districts was found 
to be the only practicable method of collecting the revenue 
and obtaining the prompt payment of government corvées.° 
As the need for revenue increased the middlemen became 
more and more necessary and powerful. They shifted their 


1 Tbid., p. 380. 

* Tbid., p. 396, “ die Hoffnung des wankenden Reiches.” 

3 Tbid., pp. 391, 395. 

* Tbid., pp. 392-304. 

® Conrad’s Handw. d. Staatsw., vol. v, p. 918. Studien, pp. 380-390. 


225] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 225 


own burdens as far as possible on their coloni, but the harder 
the government pressed them for taxes the more indulgent 
it became toward their encroachments on the rights of the 
state peasantry. The old policy of favoring the imperial 
coloni had to give way to the fiscal necessities of the time. 
The coloni ceased to be the favored state peasantry and be- 
came dependent tenants of rapacious landlords. As they 
sunk in status many of them chose flight to servility and 
deserted their ancestral lands.* But the desertion of the 
fields was disastrous to the landlords as they were account- 
able to the government both for the payment of the taxes of 
the coloni and the cultivation of the deserted land. Hence 
it was necessary for the government to secure for them a 
fixed labor force, so the coloni were bound to the soil. But 
the adscription to the glebe was not a new principle created 
by the emperors of the fourth century but merely a more 
stringent application of the age-old Hellenistic, and pre- 
Hellenistic principle of i8, which was the real ler a majori- 
bus constituta to which Valentinian referred.2 So thus, 
concluded Rostovtzeff, there was a return to the serfdom of 
‘pre-Hellenistic times. The Hellenistic monarchs had at- 
tempted to change the serfs into a state peasantry in their 
struggle against feudalism; and the Roman emperors of the 
first and second centuries had followed their example, main- 
taining the state peasantry in the East and organizing a 
similar class in the West. But in the third and fourth 
centuries it had been necessary for the emperors themselves 
to open the way for a reversion to feudalism. The course 
of evolution led its way back to earlier conditions and the 
state peasantry returned to the serfdom from which it had 

formerly emerged.* 

1Conrad’s Handw. d. Siaatsw., vol. v, pp. 918-919. 
* Cod. Just., xi, 51, 1. 
Studien, pp. 398-401. 


226 THE ROMAN COLONATE [226 


The study of the historical development of the colonate 
in the different provinces reached its most complete form in 
the work of Rostovtzeff. A generation of scholars from 
Mommsen to Beaudouin had succeeded in presenting a fairly 
clear picture of the condition of the African colonus as re- 
vealed by the African inscriptions. Rostovtzeff blazed the 
trail to the East and analysed the Egyptian papyri with such 
success that as a result of his labors the condition of the 
Egyptian peasant stands out as clearly as that of the imperial 
colonus on the African domains. ‘Likewise, in A’sia Minor 
and Sicily, Rostovtzeff made the most of the scanty source 
material in tracing the history of the peasantry both in 
Hellenistic and Roman times; and in the last chapter of his 
book he brought together all the material relating to Africa 
and presented the first comprehensive account of the agrarian 
history and development of the colonate in Roman Africa. 

As more Eastern documents are discovered no doubt many 
details in Rostovtzeff’s conclusions in regard to agrarian 
conditions in Egypt and Asia Minor will be found incorrect ; 
but we believe that the main outlines of his research there 
will stand the test of criticism, although he modestly insists 
that his work should only be regarded as a “‘ Vorstudte.” 
More debatable, however, is his insistence on “ the enormous 
influence of Hellenistic activity in the Roman Empire.” * 
Schulten, who some years earlier had found a number of 
Hellenistic parallels for the lex Manciana, was criticised by 
Toutain for “ sa passion exagérée pour Vanalogie.”? Such 
a criticism applies with considerably greater force to Ros- 
tovtzeff, who regarded the whole agrarian policy of the 
Roman emperors from Vespasian to Constantine and the 
development of the colonate in the West as constantly and 
powerfully affected by Hellenistic influences. Many anal- 


1 Rostovtzeff, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vi (1920), p. 163. 
3 Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xxiii (1899), p. 300. 


227 | THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 227 


ogies, indeed, there were between the domanial policy of the 
Roman emperors in Africa and of the Hellenistic monarchs 
in Egypt. But analogy does not always indicate causal 
connection. There are only a limited number of ways in 
which human beings can adapt themselves to their environ- 
ment; where external conditions are alike, men of all nations 
and ages have reacted toward these conditions in strikingly 
similar fashion. There was a feudal system in Japan which 
resembled the feudal system of Western Europe in many 
respects, although each was utterly unconscious of the other.’ 
There was a combination movement in the viking “ indus- 
try’ in the tenth century which had many of the character- 
istics of the development of American trusts in the nine- 
teenth,” while the “ boycott ” was practiced in Arabia sixteen 
centuries before the time of Captain Boycott. Where the 
experience of the past or of contemporaries in other parts 
of the world is known it may be utilized as a guide to action, 
provided that economic or political considerations of the 
particular time and place create the motive force. The or- 
ganization of the Kansas Industrial Court was no doubt 
somewhat influenced by the experience of Australia and New 
Zealand in similar courts of arbitration. But it is not at 
all unlikely that the Kansas Court would have been formed 
substantially as it was, had Australasia never made an ex- 
periment in compulsory arbitration; and certainly the under- 
lying cause for the formation of the court rested in the 
economic and political situation in post-war Kansas. 

How far the imperial policy of Rome was affected by the 
influence of the East it is difficult to state. As the republi- 


1Cf, Asakawa, “Origin of Feudal Land Tenure in Japan,” Am. Hist. 
Rev., xx (1914), pp. 1-23. 

2 Cf. Veblen, “An Early Experiment in Trusts,” The Place of Science 
in Modern Civilization (New York, 1919), pp. 497-509. 

® Dig., xlvii, 11,9. Cf. Heitland, Agricola, p. 375. 


228 THE ROMAN COLONATE [228 


can institutions decayed and as the Roman Empire assumed 
more and more the aspect of an absolute monarchy, the 
policy of the emperors was bound to become more or less 
similar to that of the rulers of the absolute monarchies, both 
Hellenistic and Oriental, which had preceded it; and as 
members of the official bureaucracy were moved from prov- 
ince to province the administrative methods which they had 
found successful in one province they would be likely to 
apply in another. Yet, on the whole, the old Roman policy 
of changing provincial customs and institutions as little as 
possible seems to have been retained at least until the time 
of Diocletian. It is far more likely that the ler Manciana 
in Africa instead of being strongly influenced in its formu- 
dation by Egyptian revenue laws, as Rostovtzeff believed, 
qwas an adaptation of Roman provincial policy to previous 
‘(Carthaginian practices; and if, as Cuq and Schulten argue,’ 
the lex Manciana was a law of the Republic promulgated at 
a time when Egypt was still ruled by the Ptolemies, the 
Egyptian influence must have been negligible or wholly non- 
existent. 

It is true that there were many points of similarity be- 
tween the condition of the African peasant, as regulated by 
the lex Manciana and lex Hadriana, and the Egyptian crown 
peasant of Ptolemaic and Roman times; yet one is not justi- 
fied in saying that the historical development in each case was 
not an independent one. Both in Egypt and Africa the 
peasants were granted remission of rent or taxes for plant- 
ing fruit trees and vines. But the practice in each province 
differed in many essential details, while the general policy 
of remission of rent or taxes for improvement of the land 
has been practiced time and time again by many nations in 
different parts of the world. In Africa and Egypt the life 
of the peasant was closely supervised by imperial officials, 


1 Cf. supra, pp. 177-178. 


229] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 229 


but in Egypt there was no counterpart to the conductor who 
was an essential feature of the African domanial system, 
while in Africa the peasants could not be moved about from 
one district to another at the pleasure of the administrative 
officials. In Egypt the peasant held a precarious or a short- 
term lease for his tenement over which he had no hereditary 
rights, while in Africa the colonus held no lease at all but 
cultivated a plot of land in accordance to the terms of formae 
perpetuae, which were unknown in Egypt; and in case he 
reclaimed waste or deserted land he received the important 
ius possidendi ac fruendi heredique suo relinquendt. In 
Africa the coloni furnished a moderate number of days’ 
services to the conductor while in Egypt the peasants were 
oppressed by heavy government corvées of all kinds which 
were defined by custom but not limited by imperial regula- 
tions as in Africa. In fact it seems remarkable, not that 
there were so many points of similarity between agrarian 
conditions in Egypt and Africa, but rather that the two 
leading grain provinces of the Empire should have retained 
so many historically developed differences after centuries of 
Roman administration. 

Again in the colonate legislation of the late Empire Ros- 
tovtzeff over-emphasized the Hellenistic influence. He did 
not go so far as Rudorff or Giraud in regarding the colonate 
as based on previous servile tenures in Egypt or Greece, for 
he stated repeatedly that with the exception of some decadent 
city serfdom in Asia Minor the peasants of the Hellenistic 
domains were not serfs. But the root of the colonate he 
found in the practice of is. In Egypt, although the dypdcco 
yewpyot occasionally lived outside of their native villages, the 
practice of i8fa was applied so strictly that the peasants could 
always be retained in their villages where they were available 
especially for the heavy government coruées. But there is 
no evidence that i8i was applied so rigorously elsewhere in 


230 THE ROMAN COLONATE [230 


the East or that it existed at all in the West,* except for the 
purpose of registration for taxes where it corresponded to 
the old Italian principle of origo.2 So the theory of Ros- 
tovizeff that the adscription to the soil was merely a more 
stringent application of the practice of i8iais not very con- 
vincing, at least in regions where ida or origo had never 
affected the freedom of movement of the population. Even 
in Egypt where isa had always been strictly enforced on a 
population which had been a subject race for many centuries, 
the condition of the peasantry was far different from that 
of the servile colonate. The colonus was attached to an 
estate from which he could not be removed even by his 
master. The Egyptian yewpyis had no such security of 
tenure but could be removed from one place to another at 
the arbitrary will of the government officials. The colonus 
was a perpetual and hereditary tenant whose rents and obli- 
gations could not be augmented in any way and to whom 
the courts of justice were open in case the proprietor en- 
croached on his legal rights. The Egyptian state peasant on 
the other hand had no hereditary rights in his tenement, his 
lease could be changed at the pleasure of the officials placed 
over him, and he had no access to the courts. To the yewpyos 
the Roman colonate may indeed have been a “ meliorative ” 
institution. 

As for the cause of the final legal attachment of the colont 
to the soil Rostovtzeff went back to the old taxation theory 
of Revillout, the inadequacy of which we have already dis- 
cussed.* There is no doubt that the problem of the admin- 
istration of taxation was an important one in the late Empire 
but the problem of production was far more fundamental 


1 Cf. supra, p. 222, n. I. 
? Cf. Revillout, Rev. hist. de droit fr., iii (1857), pp. 217-220. 
3 Cf. supra, pp. I-12, 134-135, 162-163. 


231] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 231 


and vital,* for not only the resources of the government but 
the resources and life itself of the declining Empire depended 
upon maintaining production, especially agricultural pro- 
duction. In his outline of the agrarian history of Egypt 
Rostovtzeff showed how various types of emphyteutic sales 
and leases were granted on the desert land (79 xépa0s) to pre- 
vent the encroachments of the desert on the fertile Nile 
valley, and where emphyteutic leases were not sufficient to 
keep such land in cultivation how the Egyptian government 
made use of the forced lease and émBody. It is strange that 
he did not likewise emphasize the economic conditions lead- 
ing up to the utilization of emphyteusis and ém Body on the 
gigantic scale with which they were applied in the late Em- 
pire. It is the belief of the writer that the same economic 
conditions which brought forth emphyteusis and ém:BorA} led 
also to the contemporaneous colonate legislation, the causes 
of which struck far deeper roots than the desire of the 
imperial administration to assure the proprietors of a steady 
agricultural working force so that the treasury in turn might 
be assured of a regular revenue. 

The most recent theory of the colonate was presented in 
1921 by Heitland.? The Agricola of Heitland is largely a 
compilation of all the references to agricultural labor in 
antiquity obtained from a study of the works of Greek and 
Latin authors and of inscriptions. Most of the writers who 
had discussed the origin of the colonate since 1880 had also 
written commentaries on the recent archeological finds in 
Africa and the East and naturally the newer sources had had 
a preponderating influence in forming their views. An en- 
cyclopedic investigation like that of Heitland, however, al- 


1Cf. Westermann, “The Economic Basis of the Decline of Ancient 
Culture,” Amer. Hist. Rev., xx (1915), p. 731. 

2 Agricola (Cambridge, 1921), pp. 157-161, 201-212, 355-361, 379-384, 
393-308, et passim. 


232 THE ROMAN COLONATE [232 


though it necessarily resulted in much repetition and little 
continuity, at least had the advantage of giving the author a 
well-balanced and catholic point of view. The importance 
of the epigraphical discoveries since 1880 was recognized 
but not over-emphasized, and although Heitland’s theory of 
the colonate was largely adapted from that of previous 
writers, it showed a capacity for evaluation of the evidence 
which was lacking in many of his predecessors. 

The serf-colonate was not the result of any single cause, 
Heitland maintained, but developed from a number of in- 
fluences.* One of these was the gradual depression of the 
status of the free tenant, a factor which had already been 
stressed by a number of writers, of which Heitland singled 
out Fustel de Coulanges, Seeck, and Rostovtzeff with special 
approval. The growing scarcity of slaves at the beginning 
of the Empire had caused a considerable development of a 
tenant-farming system, although slave-culture long remained 
the principal method of exploiting the great estates. The 
services of tenants were required on the demesne during the 
busy season, Heitland believed, and the obligation to per- 
form operae was particularly enforced against debtor tenants 
who were very numerous.” Avs slavery gradually declined 
the work of the coloni on the home farm became more and 
more necessary and consequently their operae were gradually 
increased in return for abatements in the rents which the 
coloni always found it difficult to pay. The result was that 
the coloni slowly sank into dependent socage tenants. On 
the domains of the emperor likewise there was a gradual 
depression in the status of the imperial coloni due to the en- 
croachments of the conductores, although these were par- 
tially checked by the imperial authority during the first and 
second centuries. But by the third century the tenantry 


1 Tbid., p. 361. 
2 Ibid., pp. 157, 161. 


233] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 233 


everywhere had fallen into an actual semi-servile condition 
notwithstanding the fact that legally they were still free.* 
The depression of the tenant farmer through the en- 
croachments of the landlords was not the only movement 
in the direction of serfdom. The chained slave of the Re- 
public was becoming a rare phenomenon, his place being 
taken by a native-bred slave who held a plot in servile tenure 
to his master. Barbarian captives, whom Heitland, follow- 
ing Seeck, identified with the inquilini, were attached to the 
soil by the second century.” But these various tendencies 
toward serfdom were crystallized into legal form by the 
policy of the imperial administration itself. Seeck and Ros- 
tovizeff had looked upon the legislation of the fourth century 
as undertaken primarily in the interests of the proprietor 
class upon whose strength rested the sole hope of survival 
of the Empire. But Heitland criticized their views by 
showing that the colonate legislation was as much a limita- 
tion of the rights of the proprietor over his tenants as it 
was a limitation of the right of the tenant to freedom of 
movement. The institution of the colonate was not designed 
in order to favor any particular class, he said, but “to 
guarantee a maximum of total cultivation in the interest of 
the Empire as a whole.” * The greatest anxiety which the 
imperial administrator had to face was the fear that the food 
supply might fail and much of the imperial policy from the 
first century to the fall of the Empire can be understood 
only in view of this consideration. No doubt, as Rostov- 
tzeff had said, the experience of the East had helped in 
“maturing ” the policy of the administration, but the gen- 
eral aim was controlled by the ‘‘ ever-pressing need of a food 
supply.”* The careful fostering of the coloni on the im- 


1 Ibid., pp. 200, 256, 359. 

2 Ibid., pp. 340, 360. Dig., xxx, 1, 112, pr. Cf. supra, p. 193. 
5 Tbid., p. 394. 

* Tbid., p. 208. 


234. THE ROMAN COLONATE [234 


perial domains, their exemptions from municipal munera, 
the many encouragements given to them to increase the area 
of the arable land and the protection they received from en- 
croachments of the conductores were all in line with this 
policy. But the confusion and wars of the third century 
threatened to break down the system completely. Not only 
the devastated areas but the whole Empire suffered, for the 
the regions unvisited by war had to bear the increased burden 
of supporting the Empire alone. The more vigorous gov- 
ernment of Diocletian and his successors checked the decline 
but the heavier taxes proved so oppressive that the coloni 
everywhere deserted their holdings. In the face of this 
agricultural crisis which threatened the Empire with starva- 
tion the coloni were attached to the soil in the last desperate 
effort to solve the food question. To bind free Roman citi- 
zens to the soil as serfs was an autocratic step which might 
have led to revolution but for the fact that the coloni had 
everywhere fallen into a condition of extreme dependence, 
so that the legislation of the fourth century was really “no 
more than a recognition de ture of a condition already 
created de facto by a long course of servilizing influences.” 

The great virtue of Heitland’s treatment of the origin of 
the colonate lay in his clear recognition of the vital im- 
portance which the problem of the production of food stuffs 
had for the Empire. The policy of the Roman emperors 
may have been shaped after Eastern analogies, it may have 
favored now the peasant and now the proprietor, but the 
underlying motive, he said, was always to promote by en- 
couragement or force the production of food supplies. But 
why did the problem of the production of an adequate supply 
of food products prove to be one of increasing difficulty, so 
that the imperial policy, which had begun by attempting to 
make the lot of the coloni an attractive one, ended by making 


1Tbid., p. 383. Cf., pp. 211, 384, 393. 


aa ee - —.-—- 


235] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 235 


them serfs? This is the central problem not only of the 
origin of the colonate but of the decline of the Roman Em- 
pire itself; for the establishment of the servile colonate was 
merely the final and most drastic step which the doomed 
Empire took to save itself from disintegration into innumer- 
able tiny fragments each of which could barely produce 
enough for its own needs without being able to yield a sur- 
plus sufficient to maintain a strong central government. 

Unfortunately Heitland’s explanation of the fall of Rome 
can give us little help in understanding the change of the 
imperial policy in regard to the production of food stuffs, 
for he related the decline of the Roman Empire primarily to 
inherent weaknesses in its political structure.* But in 1916 
Simkhovitch presented a new explanation of the disintegra- 
tion of the ancient world which not only stressed the funda- 
mental importance of agricultural production to the life of 
the Empire, but at the same time offered a convincing reason 
for the decline of production, the desertion of the fields, 
and the frantic legislation of the late Empire, emphyteusis, 
émtBory, and the colonate.*” The cause of the ruin of Rome 
was the progressive deterioration and final exhaustion of 
the soil of the Empire. In the opinion of the writer this 
is the explanation which can most adequately account for the 
colonate; and in the succeeding pages it is his purpose to 
reéxamine the evidence which relates to the historical de- 
velopment of the colonate and test the validity of the theory 
of Simkhovitch as an explanation of its origin.® 


1 Tbid., pp. 379-380. 

2 Simkhovitch, “ Rome’s Fall Reconsidered,” Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxi 
(1916), pp. 201-243. 

3In 1920, Frank, in his Economic History of Rome (p. 301) followed 
the theory of Simkhovitch to the extent of accounting for the serf- 
colonate in Africa as due to the desertion by the tenantry of the thin 
African soil, which had been exhausted by Roman methods of cultivation. 
Three years later (History of Rome, New York, 1923, p. 559) he stated 
that the colonate legislation, which he believed was inaugurated by Dio- 
cletian, was caused by the fact that “ the coloni were in many places giving 
up the struggle with a land constantly deteriorating under tenant culture.” 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 


THE word colonus is derived from the verb colere, to 
cultivate; and originally it referred simply to a cultivator, 
as its etymology implies. It is a very ancient word and 
carries us back to prehistoric times. Traditionally the colo- 
nus was a proprietor of a small piece of land.* The legends 
upon which Dionysius of Halicarnassus based his Romanae 
Antiquitates represented the early kings distributing the 
land to their subjects in small plots. Romulus, after he had 
divided the land into thirty equal portions and allotted one 
to each curia, then distributed the land among his people so 
that each citizen should have an equal amount;* and his 
policy was followed by his successors.” This early equality 
among Roman citizens which lasted well along into the 
period of the Republic was a very strong Roman tradition. 
Pliny the Elder stated that the size of the holding which a 
citizen possessed after the expulsion of the kings was seven 
jugera, and that Curius Dentatus, the conqueror of the Sam- 
nites, declared the citizen who was not content with seven 
jugera was dangerous to the Republic.* Unlike the Spar- 
tans, the Romans held agriculture in great esteem,’ and 


1Wallon, L’Esclavage dans lantiquité, vol. ii, p. 73. ‘Revillout, Rev. 
hist. de droit fr., vol. ii (1856), p. 419. 

2Dionys., Antig., ii, 7. ‘* uid pév ody airy dtalpeote bd ‘PapbdAov Tar TE 
avdpGv Kal tig YOpac, TEptéyxovoa rHv KotvaY Kal peyifynv lodtyra Tovdde Tic Gv.”’ 

* Dionys., op. cit., ili, 1; Cic., De Repub., ii, 14. Cf. Vergil., Aeneid, vi, 
816. 

4 Plin., N. H., xviii, 4. Cf. Valerius Maximus, Memor., iv, 3, 5. 

5 Cf. Cato, De Agric., pr.; Varro, R. R., iii, 11. | 

236 [236 


237 | THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 237 


their legends pointed with as much pride to the zealous in- 
dustry of a Cincinnatus on his humble four jugera plot or 
of a Regulus with his seven jugera as to their military 
prowess.” 

On the other hand certain modern writers argue that the 
earliest form of agrarian organization of the Romans after 
the settlement of the wandering tribes was that of relatively 
large estates cultivated by serfs.” This appears to have 
been the organization of many ancient states whose early 
history is somewhat better known than that of Rome, such 
as Sparta, Crete, and Thessaly;* and certain features of 
Roman economic life such as the institution of clientship, 
the miserable political and social condition of the plebeians 
at the beginning of historic times, and the assignment of 
land in strips* in the later colonies seem to point back to 
an earlier servile organization rather than the legendary 
state of the small independent farmer.° Above all, the ex- 
istence of the remains of a very elaborate drainage system, 
which was built under hundreds of the small plots, which 
later Roman accounts unanimously attributed to their an- 
cestors, seems to be more conformable with a “ villa” sys- 
tem of dependent servile holdings, than that of numerous 
small proprietors.® 

Whatever the status of the colonus in prehistoric Rome 


1 Plin., N. H., xviii, 4; Valer. Max., Memor., iv, 4, 6. 

2 Neumann, Hist. Zeitsch., xcvi (1906), p. 30; Frank, Economic History 
of Rome (Baltimore, 1920), pp. 7-11, 22, 37-38; cf. Heitland, Agricola, 
pp. 27-28; Gras, Introduction to Economic History (New York, 1922), 
p. 79. 

3 Cf. supra, pp. 70-73. 

4Cf. Lachmann, Liber Colon., in Gromatici Veteres, p. 229, “Ager 
eius in lacineis est adsignatus; p. 236, Ager...in Jacineis...colonis eorum 
est adsignatus. 

5 Frank, op. cit., pp. 10-11. 


STbid., pp. 7-9. Cf., pp. 22, 39. 


238 THE ROMAN COLONATE [238 


may have been, it is certain that in historical times the colo- 
nus was not a serf. The word colonus in the period of the 
Republic was used ordinarily to designate either a settler 
in one of the numerous colonies which Rome established 
on conquered territory, or a small tenant who leased a plot 
of land either from the ager publicus or from the posses- 
sions of a wealthy patrician.* The little city state of Rome 
launched its career of conquest very early in its history. 
Almost immediately the problem of the disposal of the con- 
quered land presented itself and proved to be a constant 
irritant to civil strife. Two policies were followed which 
in time came to conflict with each other.” A part of the 
conquered land was granted to poor Roman citizens as colo- 
nists.° Colonies thus established provided strong Roman 
nuclei in the conquered territory whose interests were iden- 
tical with those of the mother city and whose presence in 
the still hostile land did much to prevent rebellion and to 
insure the loyalty of the newly organized territory.* Even 
more important was the consideration that colonies offered 
provision for the landless poor of Rome and held out the 
promise of the development of a strong peasant class, from 
which the early Romans thought “ both the best citizens and 
the sturdiest soldiers were produced.” * These settlements 
were known as coloniae and the settlers as colom, our first 
definite use of that term in historical times.°® 

The second policy of the Roman Republic toward the 


1 Cf. Revillout, op. cit., pp. 421-431. 

?Cf. Mommsen, History of Rome (Dickson translation, New York, 
1905), vol. iii, p. 304. 

§ Dionys., Antiq., vi, 43; Appian, Bel. Civ., ii, 140. 

* Dionys., loc. cit.; Appian, Bel. Civ. i, 7. 

5 Cato, De Agric., pr. “Ex agricolis et viri fortissimi et milites strenu- 
issimi gignuntur.” 

6 Sicul. Flac., in Gromatici Veteres, Ed. Lachmann, p. 135; Isidor., 
Etymolog., Xv, 2, 9. 


239] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 239 


subject territory was to encourage the reclamation of the 
land, which had usually been thoroughly devastated in the 
course of the war,’ in order to obtain a revenue from it. 
Some of the land was sold outright by the quaestors;? but 
by far the largest proportion was retained as the ager pub- 
licus.* This land was leased to anyone who agreed to culti- 
vate it and pay to the state a vectigal of one-tenth of the 
harvest of wheat and one-fifth of the other fruits.* Possibly 
at first the plebeians were prohibited by law from taking 
up claims in the ager publicus.° But at any rate they were 
too poor to be able to exploit the conquered and wasted land 
to advantage, and the patricians, more bountifully supplied 
with capital and with an immediate labor supply in their 
slaves and clients,° hastened to take possession of as much 
of the ager publicus as they could.’ 

But what became of the inhabitants of the conquered 
lands? It was not the Roman custom to massacre her de- 
feated foes nor did she at this early date enslave whole 
nations.” The majority of the subject peasantry apparently 


1Cf. Liv., ii, 62. “ Vastati agri sunt. Incendiis deinde non villarum 
modo sed etiam vicorum...” 

2 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 7. 

3Cic., In Verr., ii, 3, 13. “Civitates sunt bello a majoribus nostris 
subactae; quarum ager cum esset publicus populi Romani factus.” 

4 Appian, op. cit., i, 7. 

5 At least Cassius Hemina refers to “quicumque propter plebitatem 
agro’ publico eiecto sunt.” Nonius Marcellus, ii, 149. 

Festus, De Verb. Signif., under Patres. “ Patres senatores ideo ap- 
pellati sunt, quia agrorum partes adtribuerant tenuioribus ac si liberis 
propriis.” Cf. Dig., xliii, 26, 6, 2. 

7 Liv., iv, 51. “Non in retinendis modo publicis agris, quos iam teneret, 
pertinacem nobilitatem esse, sed ne vacuum quidem agrum nuper ex 
hostibus captum plebi dividere, mox paucis, ut cetera, futurum praedae.” 
Cf. ibid., vi, 5; Revillout, op. cit., pp. 428-430; Greenidge, History of 
Rome (New York, 1905), vol. i, p. 74. 

® Liv., vii, 27. 


240 THE ROMAN COLONATE ~ [240 


became either direct tenants of the ager publicus or sub- 
tenants of patrician lessees. These small tenants were 
known as colont* and the conception of the colonus as a 
free tenant par excellence arose, which was to last until the 
time of the late Empire. 

The patricians had the opportunity of first acquiring 
large tracts of the ager publicus; and they were not slow in 
taking advantage of their favorable position and in increas- 
ing the extent of their possessions. Before long complaints 
commenced to arise that the patricians were engrossing all 
the land * and popular agitators began to urge the passage 
of a law limiting the size of their holdings in the ager pub- 
licus. “‘ Are they so shameless,” cried a plebeian orator, 
“as to demand that although the allotment of land to a 
plebeian amounted to a bare two jugera apiece, they them- 
selves should be allowed to possess more than five hundred 
jugera each; that single men should be permitted to possess 
the share of almost three hundred citizens while the plot of 
land granted to the plebeian scarcely sufficed for a meager 
habitations or a place of burial?’ * Even more serious than 
the growth of large estates was the rapid extension of slav- 
ery. Slaves had not occupied an important place in early 
Roman society, for in small-scale agriculture there was very 
little need of them.® But with the growth of latifundia, 
cultivation by means of slaves came to be preferred to the 

1 Appian, Bel. Civ., ii, 140; Gaius, Institut., ii, 7; Cic., In Verr. ii, 3 
12-15; 228. 


7 Isidor., Etymol., ix, 4, 36. “:Coloni sunt cultores advenae...” Cic., 
In Verr. ii, 3, 98. “ Siculi, coloni populi Romani atque aratores.” 

Tei V ee Wy its 

* Liv., vi, 36. “ Auderentne postulare ut, cum bina iugera agri plebi 
dividerentur ipsis plus quingenta iugera haberet liceret, ut singuli prope 
trecentorum civium possiderent agros, plebeio homini vix ad tectum 
necessarium aut locum sepulturae suus pateret ager?” 

Valer. Max., Memor., iv, 4, 11. 


241 | THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 241 


small tenantry. Not only could better discipline be main- 
tained but also the slaves could not be taken away for mili- 
tary service like the coloni, and a considerable profit could 
_ be obtained from their offspring.” Consequently, our sources 
bear record to the steady disappearance of the small pro- 
prietors and tenant farmers and their replacement on the 
great estates by gangs of slaves.” 

In the earlier period of Roman history the enslavement 
of plebeians for their debts ® was probably a more important 
source of slaves than war. But certainly from the time of 
the Punic wars,* and possibly earlier,” war became the prin- 
cipal source of slaves; and as soon as Rome commenced to 
extend her conquests beyond the peninsula slaves were im- 
ported in enormous numbers. Sicily, Sardinia, Cisalpine 
Gaul, and Spain furnished large quotas.° Even greater num- 
bers were imported into Italy after the victories of Aemilius 
Paulus. From Epirus alone 150,000 captives were sold.’ 
The prisoners which Marius captured after the battles of 
Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae numbered 90,000 Teutons and 
60,000 ‘Cimbri;* Caesar’s victories in Gaul were said to 
have yielded him a million captives to be sold as slaves,° 


1 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 7; cf. Heitland, Agricola, p. 144; Hartmann, 
Arch.-epigr. Mitt., vol. xvii (18904), p. 125. 

2 Liv., vi, 12; Plutarch, Tib. Grac., 8; Cic., C. Rull., 11, 30; Colum., De 
R.R., 1, pr., 3. 

3 This was one of the principal reasons for the bitter discontent of the 
plebeians and a leading cause of their struggles with the patricians. Cf. 
Wallon, L’Esclavage dans l’antiquité, ii, pp. 26-30. Liv., ii, 23; 27; 31; 
atts YAS 36, 

4 Liv., xxii, 60. 

5 Livy (x, 46) gives an account of the sale of Samnite prisoners for 
2,033,000 asses in 293 B.C. 

6 Liy., xli, 28; Appian, Bel. Hisp., 99. 

7 Liv., xlv, 34. 

8 Liv., Epit., |xviii. 

® Appian, De Reb. Gall., 2; Plutarch, Caes., 15. 


242 THE ROMAN COLONATE [242 


while after Lucullus’ campaign in the Pontus against Mith- 
radates slaves sold for as little as four drachmae apiece.* 

Piracy before the campaign of Pompey was almost as 
important a source of slaves as war. Strabo related that 
as many as ten thousand (pvpids) slaves a day were sold at 
the great slave market at Delos by the pirates.* They car- 
ried on their nefarious work not only on the sea but on the 
land as well, and organized raids far inland, frequently in 
Italy itself, where they captured unprotected peasants and 
sold them as slaves.* Ingram estimates that in the late 
Republic the slaves outnumbered the free three to one.’ 
And so, Pliny lamented, the fields of Italy which were once 
“tilled by the hands of generals and exulted beneath a plow- 
share crowned with wreaths of laurel and guided by a 
husbandman graced with triumphs”, are now “ cultivated 
by slaves whose legs are in chains and tilled by the hands of 
malefactors and men with branded faces ”’.® 

Slavery had always been very extensive in the ancient 
world, but it had never been employed by any people before 
with the reckless energy so characteristic of the Romans in 
all their works. The slaves were divided into gangs of ten, 
called decuriae, placed under the control of a freedman.* If 
the freedman did not perform his work of direction to the 
best of his master’s interest he could be reduced to slavery,’ 


1 Appian, Bel. Mithr., 78. 

2 Strabo, xiv, 5, 2. 

® Suet., Aug., 32; Tib., 8; Cic., Pro Cluent., 7. 

4 Ingram, History of Slavery (London, 1895), p. 43. 

° Plin., N. H., xviii, 4. “Ipsorum tunc manibus imperatorum cole- 
bantur agri,..gaudente terra vomere laureato et triumphali aratore... 
at nunc eadem illa vincti pedes, damnatae manus inscriptique vultus 
exercent.” 

®Colum., De R. R., i, 9. 

" Frag. Iur. Rom, Vatic., 272, in Huschke, Jurisprud. Antejust., p. 774. 
Cf. Seebohm, English Village Community, 4th Ed. (London, 1905), 
p. 265. 


243 | THE COLONI OF THE A ASRS 243 


and impelled by this fear he drove the slaves under him to 
their limit of physical endurance. To prevent their revolt 
or flight from this tyranny the slaves worked with ball and 
chain and at night were lodged in underground prisons 
(ergastula).* Cato considered it cheaper to work a slave 
to death rather than let him grow old in the service, and he 
advised selling old or infirm slaves as ruthlessly as one 
would sell old and worn-out cattle, useless wagons, or iron 
tools.* The horrible savagery of the slaves in the servile 
wars is proof of the hatred and resentment engendered by 
such heartless treatment. 

The criminal exploitation of slave labor by the Romans 
used up the slaves so rapidly that constant new accretions 
were necessary to maintain the supply. The decline in slave 
population was later to become a serious problem, when the 
era of conquest ceased to bring in fresh annual hordes of 
captives. But far more disastrous in its ultimate conse- 
quences was the effect of the slave-driven agriculture on the 
land. Slave labor is always extremely wasteful and ex- 
hausting to the soil. ‘‘ The loving care which agriculture 
needs ”’* is altogether absent. “It is the very worst plan 
of all,” said Pliny the Elder, “to have land tilled by slaves 
from the ergastula, as indeed is anything that is done by 
those who have no hope.”* “Especially grain land,” said 
Columella, “do slaves damage greatly. They do not plow 
the ground carefully, and they charge to your account much 


1 Plaut., Captiv., 729. “ Nam noctu neruo unictus custodibitur.” Cf. 
Wallon., op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 226 et seq. 


2 Cato, De Agric., ii, 7. “ Boves vetulos, armenta delicula, oves 
deliculas, lanam, pelles, plostrum vetus, ferramenta vetera, servum 
senem, Servum morbosum, et siquid aliut supersit vendat.” Cf, Plutarch, 
Cato Maj., 21; Cod. Theod., ix, 12, 1 and 2. 

® Heitland, op. cit., p. 159. 

4 Plin., N. H., xviii, 7. “ Coli rura ab ergastulis pessumum est, et quic- 
quid agitur a desperantibus.” 


244 THE ROMAN COLONATE [244 


more seed than they really have sown; neither do they take 
care of what they have planted so that it will yield a good 
crop. Consequently it happens that a field is all too often 
discredited.” * ) | 

If the landlords had all been like Cato who personally 
supervised the cultivation of his estates, the effects of slave 
culture on the soil might not have been so deleterious. But 
Cato was an exception even for his own time and the pro- 
prietor who himself managed his estate became increasingly 
rare in succeeding generations. The owners of the great 
latifundia were important personages and they wished to be 
at Rome in the center of a rapidly expanding empire where 
the exciting game of politics was to be played with the rich 
harvest of a provincial proconsulship as its ultimate reward. 
Their estates were left in charge of their slave stewards or 
vilici, whose sole responsibility lay in supplying a steady in- 
come to the lord, which he could use in gaining popularity 
and votes in the capital by means of providing costly spec- 
tacles for the plebs and bribes for the more influential.’ 
So long as the income was forthcoming the vilicus received 
little interference on the part of the master. Only when the 
returns commenced to decline were questions asked, a new 
vilicus appointed, and the old one allowed to fall back into 
the ranks of the mass of slaves. 

Such a system inevitably led to exhausting cultivation of 
the land. Conservation methods were impossible. The 
vilici, even if they were acquainted with the wise practices 
advocated by Cato, Varro, and other agricultural writers, 
dared not practice them. The land must be cultivated in 


1Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “ Praecipue frumentarium (agrum) ...max- 
ime vexant servi...nec industrie terram vertant, longeque plus imputant 
seminis jacti, quam quod severint: sed nec quod terrae mandaverint sic 
adjuvant, ut recti proveniat....Ita fit ut...ager saepius infametur.” 


2 Heitland, Agricola, pp. 153, 157. — 


245 | THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 245 


such a way as to yield the greatest immediate profit or else 
they were lost. Nor were the small possessors and tenant 
farmers in a better position in face of such competition as - 
this. They were compelled to resort to the same methods 
of wasteful exploitation practiced on the latifundia or else 
go to the wall. They were always on the margin and when 
they were drafted in the army or an invading enemy rav- 
aged their lands they had the greatest difficulty in paying 
their debts and keeping themselves out of a debtor’s prison.* 

Before long the baneful results of this exhausting culti- 
vation commenced to appear. Italy, formerly so fertile,’ 
and regarded by the Greeks as an inexhaustible granary, 
now commenced to suffer from scarcity of grain and from 
famine.* Farms were deserted as early as 436 B. C.,’ 
if we can trust the account of Livy, and grain had to be im- 
ported from Sicily soon afterward.’ Possibly nothing is 
more significant as a mark of the growing exhaustion of 
the soil than the increasing size of the holdings considered 
necessary to support a family.° The earliest assignments 
to colonists were from two to seven jugera in size;‘ but 
in the second century before Christ the amount of land 
found necessary to induce men to go as colonists to certain 
districts was fifty jugera or more.* Pliny, writing toward 


fhaviuevi 105 27 3.423 XX Vill, 113, xXx, 14. 

sotrabo, Vi, 4, I. 

AV Waa 62) 111,325 1V,"125 253 52. 

AS CANE Seine e 

S Livi, iv, 252 52. 

6 Cf. Simkhovitch, Pol. Sci. Quart. xxxi (1916), p. 206; Oliver, 
Roman Economic Conditions (Toronto, 1907), pp. 30-31. 

7 Liv. iv, 47 (415 B.C., 2 jugera) ; v, 24 (392 B.C., 3 7/12 jugera) ; v, 
30 (300 B.C., 7 jugera); vi, 16 (382 B.iC., 2 1/2 jugera) ; vill, 21 (326 
B.C., 2 jugera). 

8 Liv., xxxvii, 57 (189 B.C., Bononia, 50-70 jugera) ; x1, 34 (181 B. ie 
Aquileia, 50-140 jugera). 


246 THE ROMAN COLONATE [246 


the close of the first century after Christ, said that seven 
jugera was the amount of land allotted to the people after 
the expulsion of the kings and considered it almost miracu- 
lous that so small a plot of land should have sufficed to 
support a family." But in the second century before 
Christ the assignments of the Gracchi in their attempt 
to reestablish a peasant class in Italy were thirty jugera; * 
and in the succeeding century the allotments of the trium- 
virs were fifty * jugera and of Caesar from thirty-five to 
sixty-six and one-third sugera.* 

The ruin of Italian agriculture has frequently been laid 
to the competition of grain tithes which commenced to pour 
into Rome after the First Punic War.° But such an expla- 
nation is prima facie absurd, for the great Roman landlords 
controlled the state policy and they would never have per- 
mitted Sicilian grain to enter the Roman market if their 
Italian possessions had not already ceased to yield a crop 
of wheat sufficient for the demand.* Nor is the explana- 
tion that the decadence of Italian agriculture was due to the 
havoc wrought on the small farmer class by Hannibal’s long 
occupation of Italy” any more tenable. ‘Carthage suffered 
from the war as much or more than Rome, yet a generation 
later she had so far recovered that she could ship 1,000,000 
modu of wheat and 500,000 modi of barley to Rome to 
gain favor against Masinissa,° and could frighten old Cato 


1 Plin., N. H., xviii, 4. 

* Bruns, Fontes, i, 3, 11, line 14. 

$ Frontinus, p. 30; Hyginus, p. 170, Gromatici Veteres, Ed. Lachmann. 
* Hyginus, op. cit., p. 201. Cf. Simkhovitch, loc. cit. 

5’ Cf. Mommsen, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 75 et seq. 

* Cf. Frank, Economic History of Rome, p. 57. 


™ Davis, The Influence of Wealth in Imperial Rome (New York, 1910), 
p. 237; Heitland, op. cit., p. 144; Mommsen, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 100. 
* Liv., xliit, 6. 


247] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 247 


with her agricultural prosperity." The devastations of Han- 
nibal merely accelerated the decline of Italian agriculture. 
It had set in before the Punic wars, and the long period of 
safety from invasion which followed the defeat of Hannibal 
brought no recovery.’ 

In medieval England after the soil became exhausted the 
arable land was converted into pastures and the common 
fields were enclosed.* A similar transformation took place 
in Italy on a very much grander scale, and the great slave 
plantations were turned into enormous sheep and cattle 
ranches with slaves as herdsmen.* The ranch required less 
labor and less oversight; it needed less capital and ran less 
chance of loss; and it furnished a larger and more certain 
net produce.° Just as in the enclosure movement in Eng- 
land there were many cases of the eviction of tenants and 
of the expropriation of small proprietors.° But in the ma- 
jority of cases the rich graziers probably merely took over 
land which was already being deserted, for from the begin- 
ning of the second century before Christ there are frequent 
references to agri desertt. In 186 B. C. the consul Spurius 
Postumus in the course of a tour of Italy which he was 


1 Plutarch, Cato Mayj., 27. 

* Cf. Greenidge, History of Rome (New York, 1905), vol. i, pp. 69-72. 

3 Cf. Bradley, The Enclosures in England (New York, 1918). 

Varro, R.R., i, 2, 17; ii, 10, 4-5; Appian, Bel Civ., i, 7; Suet., Jul., 42. 

5 Cf. Wallon, op. cit. ii, p. 351. “A la grande culture, qui avait 
diminué déja le nombre des travailleurs, on préféra un autre mode qui 
permit de le réduire encore et de le moins surveiller, qui demandat moins 
de mise de fonds, qui courtit moins de chances de perte, qui donnat, en 
un mot, un produit net plus grand et plus sur; et on crut le trouver 
dans le sysiéme des paturages.” Cf. Varro, i, 7, 10. “ Alii dant pri- 
matum bonis pratis, ut ego quoque; a quo antiqui prata parata 
apellarunt.” 

® Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 7. Seneca, Epist., xc, 39; Sallust, Ep. ad Caes., 
ii, 5; Jug., xli; Quint., Declam., xiii, 4; Horat. Od., ii, 18; Apuleius, 
Metamorph., ix, 35. 


248 THE ROMAN COLONATE [248 


making discovered that the colonies of Sipontum on the 
Adriatic and Buxentum on the Mediterranean had been 
abandoned by their colonists.* In 180 B. C. the ager pub- 
licus in Samnium was so far deserted that forty thousand 
Ligurians were settled there and given 150,000 sesterces to 
provide necessaries for their new homes.” A half-century 
later Tiberius Gracchus traveling through Etruria was ‘so 
struck with the desolate character of the country that, ac- 
cording to the statement of his brother Caius, he first was 
impressed with the necessity for agrarian reform.* But al- 
though assignments of land were made repeatedly they had 
little result, for the coloni almost immediately deserted the 
exhausted land. Sulla offered thousands of jugera to his 
legions, but the veterans soon abandoned their holdings; * 
nor were the attempts to settle veterans on the land during 
the early years of the Empire more successful.° A very 
considerable portion of the army of Catiline was made up 
of country youths who had been unable to make a livelihood 
on the farms, and, attracted by the corn doles of the city, 
had given up the “thankless labor” of the fields for the 
idle leisure of the city.® 

Agriculture had ceased to be profitable. There was no 
question about it in the minds of the writers of the time. 
“Cato,” Plutarch tells us, “declared that farming was more 


A Liv., XXxIK, 29, 

3 Liv., x1,38. 

5 Plutarch, Tib. Gracch., 8. Rutilius Namatianus found the same dis- 
trict in a decadent condition five centuries later. De Reditu suo, 
lines 409-415. 

4 Cic., C. Rull., ii, 28; 36. 

S"Tac., Ann., Xiv, 27. 

6 Sall., Catil., xxxvii, 7. “ Praeterea iuventus, quae in agris manum 


mercede inopiam toleraverat, privatis atque publicis largitionibus excita 
urbanum otium ingrato labori praetulerat. ; 


240] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 249 


of an amusement than a source of income and preferred in- 
vesting his money in remunerative undertakings such as 
marshes which required draining,* land which would pro- 
duce an income by pasturage or by sale of wood and the 
like.” * Cicero related that ‘when he (Cato the Elder) 
was asked what was the most profitable method of utilizing 
one’s property, he answered, ‘Good pasture’. What next? 
‘Fairly good pasture.’ What third? ‘ Poor pasture.’ What 
fourth? ‘ Agriculture.’’’* Cato regarded the planting of 
vineyards as the most profitable means of cultivating an 
estate in case the land was fit for it.* Since the systematic 
culture of the vine was introduced rather late in the Re- 
public, the slopes of the hills and of the mountains were 
still fertile in the time of Cato. But in another century 
vine culture was following in the unfortunate footsteps of 
the cultivation of grain. Varro regarded pasturage as more 
profitable than vineyards,° and stated that there were those 
who believed that a vineyard cost as much as it produced.” ‘ 
Wine as well as grain was already being imported in the 
time of Varro,* just as it was a hundred years later into 


1 Ror an undrained marsh still retained its native fertility. Cf. Simk- 
hovitch, op. cit., p. 213. 

2 Plutarch, Cat Maj., 21. Trans. by Stewart. Cf. ibid., 25. 

3Cic.,, De Off., ii, 26. “A quo (Cato senex) cum quaereretur quid 
maxime in re familiari expediret, respondit, ‘bene pascere’. Quid 
secundum? ‘Salis bene pascere’. Quid tertium? ‘ Male pascere’. 
Quid quartum? ‘Arare’”. 

4 Cato, De Agric., i, 7. “ Vinea est prima si vino bono vel si vino multo 
est.” 

SPlinn WAH. xiv) 13-14. 

6R.R., i, 7, 10. “Alli dant primatum bonis pratis, ut ego.” 

7Tbid., i, 8, 1. “Contra vineam sunt qui putent sumptu fructum 
devorare.” 

8 Ibid., ii, pr., 3. “Frumentum locamus qui nobis advehat, qui saturi 


fiamus, ex Africa et Sardinia, et navibus vindemiam condimus ex insula 
Coa et Chia.” 


250 THE ROMAN COLONATE [250 


Latium itself, which had once been so fertile as to be called 
the land of Saturn,’ but which in the first century of the 
Empire was considered even worse than “‘ deserted Apulia”.’ 
On the estates of the nobles Horace lamented that the regal 
palace and the stagnant lake had left few acres for the plow, 
and that violets and myrtles were planted where olives grew 
before; * while among the plebs Vergil complained that no 
one regarded the plow as worthy of honor, and the fields 
lay idle and deserted with their cultivators away.* 

One of the most serious consequences of the desertion of 
the fields and the conversion of arable land into great slave- 
worked ranches was the increasing unhealthfulness of the 
country districts.” The Italian climate was sultry and un- 
less the land was drained constantly swamps breeding the 


1Colum., De R. R., i, pr. “Itaque in hoc Latio et Saturnia terra, ubi 
dii cultus agrorum progeniem suam docuerant, ibi nunc ad hastam 
locamus, ut nobis ex transmarinis provinciis advehatur frumentum, ne 
fame laboremus; et vindemias condimus ex insulis Cycladibus, ac re- 
gionibus Boeticis Gallicisque.” Cf. Simkhovitch, op. cit., p. 214. 

2 Senec., Epist., Ixxxvii, 7. “ Divitem illum putas,..quia in omnibus 
provinciis arat, quia tantum suburbani agri possidet, quantum invidiose 
in desertis Apuliae possideret.” Cf. Heisterbergk, Die Entstehung des 
Colonats, p. 60. 


5 Horat., Od., ii, 15. 


Iam patica aratio iugera regiae 
Moles relinquent; undique latius 
Extenta visentur Lucrino 

Stagna lacu, platanusque caelebs 
Evincet ulmos; tum violaria et 
Myrtus et omnis copia narium 
Spargent olivetis odorem 
Fertilibus domino priori. 


* Vergil., Georg., 1, 506-507. 


“Non ullus aratro 
Dignus honos; squalent abductis arva colonis.” 


5 Cf. Dureau de la Malle, Economie politique des Romains, vol. ii, pp. 
7-52; Lanciani, Wanderings in the Roman Campagna, pp. 2 et seq. 


251] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 251 


malarial mosquito were the inevitable consequence.* When 
the land was divided into small farms the first care of the 
peasant was to see that the water of the heavy rains was 
drained off. But after the land was converted into great 
ranches of many square miles in extent nothing was done to 
prevent the formation of pestilent marshes.* The result 
was the great scourge of malaria.* Mentioned first by Plau- 
tus“ as early as the Second Punic war, and a generation 
later by Terence,° its symptoms were unmistakably described 
by Cato,° who warned prospective purchasers against buy- 
ing land in these unhealthy districts." Varro regarded such 
a purchase as suicidal to the purchaser. “On the unhealthy 
farm,” he said, ‘“‘ however fertile it may be, misfortune does 
not allow the colonus to make a profit. For when the struggle 
is with Death, then not only is the profit uncertain, but the 
very existence of the cultivators as well; and where the 
land is insalubrious, agriculture becomes nothing less than a 
gamble of both the life and fortune of the farmer.” * Ifa 


1Varro, R. R., i, 12, 2. “ Loca palustra...crescunt animalia quaedam 
minuta quae...efficiunt difficiles morbos.” Colum., De R. R., i, 5. 
“Nec paludem quidem vicinam esse oportet aedificiis, quod...infestis 
aculeis armata gignit animalia, quae in nos densisimis examinibus in- 
volant...ex quibus saepe contrahuntur caeci morti quorum causas ne 
medici quidem perspicere queunt.” 

2 Dureau de la Malle, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 48; Wallon, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 358. 

3 Cf. Simkhovitch, op. cit., p. 226; Huntington, “ Climatic Change and 
Agricultural Exhaustion as Elements in the Fall of Rome,” Quart. Jour. 
of Eco., xxi (1917), pp, 202-204. 

4 Curculio, i, 1, 17. 

5 Hecyrae, ili, 2, 22. 

®De Agric., clvii, 7. “Si bilis atra est et si lienes turgent et si cor 
dolet et si iecur aut pulmones aut praecordia...dolitabunt” etc. Cf. A 
Virginia Farmer, Roman Farm Management, p. 95. 

™ Cato, op. cit., i, 2 and 3; cf., xiv, 5; cxli, 2. 

8 R.R.,i, 4,3. “In pestilenti calamitas, quamvis in feraci agro, colonum 
ad fructus pervenire non patitur. Etenim ubi ratio cum Orco habetur, 
ibi non modo fructus est incertus, sed etiam colentium vita. Quare ubi 
salubritas non est, cultura non aliud est atque alea domini vitae ac rel 
familiaris.” Cf. tbid., i, 2, 8; i, 4, 4-5. 


282 THE ROMAN COLONATE [2s2 


man should inherit an unhealthy farm he should sell it if 
he can, and if he cannot, he should give it up anyway.” 
Likewise Columella stated that on insalubrious land no 
matter how fertile or productive, death was more certain 
than profits.? So thus desertion of the soil led to pestilen- 
tial swamps, which in turn resulted in more deserted land 
and more swamps, and so on in a never-ending circle. In 
early days the lands of the Volscians had been among the 
most fertile in Italy and had supported twenty-four flourish- 
ing cities.* But by the time of Pliny no trace of this early 
prosperity was visible, for the great Pontine marshes cov- 
ered the land. Apulia was deserted,* Tarentum and Antium 
were abandoned and attempts to recolonize them soon 
failed,’ while the cities of Picentia had decayed and become 
mere villages.° The historian Livy could well wonder how 
these barren and deserted regions could once have been 
populated by “an innumerable multitude of freemen which 
at the present day Roman slaves save from being a desert, 
a scanty seminary of soldiers being scarcely left’’.’ Cam- 


1Jbid., i, 12, 2. “ Fundanius, ‘Quid potero’, inquit, ‘facere, si istius 
modi mi fundus hereditati obvenerit, quo minus pestilentia noceat?’ 
“TIstuc vel ego possum respondere,’ inquit Agrius, ‘ vendas, quot assibus 
possis, aut si nequeas relinquas.’” Cf. Cic., C. Rull., ii, 26; 36; De 
Repub., ii, 6. 

2Re R. R., i, 3. “ Nec rursus pestilenti quamvis feracissimo pinguique 
agro dominum ad fructus pervenire. Nam ubi sit cum Orco ratio pon- 
enda, ibi non modo perceptionem fructuum, sed et vitam colonorum esse 
dubiam, vel potius mortem quaestu certiorem.” 

B Pliny, Neth a tite toe 

*Senec., Epist., lxxxvii, 7, “in desertis Apuliae.” 

5 Tac., Ann., Xiv, 27. 

P StLAapo, V, 4, 13. 


"Liv., vi, 12. Mihi...miraculo fuit...innumerabilem multitudinem 
liberorum capitum. in eis fuisse locis, quae nunc vix seminario exiguo 
militum relicto servitia Romana ab. solitudine vindicant.” Cf. Simk- 
hovitch, op. cit., p. 230. 


253 | THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 253 


pania, however, in the first century, still remained the gar- 
den spot of Italy and Pliny could describe it as a land ‘‘ so 
fortunate and so blest with natural beauties that it is evi- 
dent that when nature formed it she took delight in accumu- 
lating all her blessings in a single spot.” Yet in 295 A. D. 
in this same “ felix Campania” there were 528,042 jugera 
of agri desert.” 

The concentration of the landed property into latifundia 
and the disappearance of the small farmer had not been 
perceived without alarm by the more far-sighted of the 
Roman statesmen. According to the accounts of Livy and 
Dionysius, from the time of Spurius Cassius and Appius 
Claudius in the early part of the fifth century B. C. attempts 
had been made to limit the holdings of the rich and dis- 
tribute the surplus among the poor.* But these earlier agra- 
rian measures met with little success and usually resulted in 
the death of the leader of the movement. Finally, however, 
after a long and bitter struggle, a law was passed which 
limited the amount of the ager publicus which anyone might 
hold to five hundred jugera, declared that no one might 
pasture more than five hundred sheep or one hundred cattle 
on government land, and required the employment of a cer- 
tain number of freemen on every estate.* But this law was 
soon disregarded. Within ten years Caius Licinius Stolo, 
the reputed author of the measure, is said to have been 
prosecuted for possessing more than five hundred jugera of 


1 Plin., N. H., iii, 5. “Companiae ora... per se felix illa ac beata amoe- 
nitas, ut palam sit uno in loco gaudentis opus esse naturae.” 

2 Cod. Theod., xi, 28, 2. 

’ Liv., ii, 41; Dionys., Antig., viii, 73; ix, 59. 

“Liv., vi, 35; Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 8. Whether the so-called Licinian 
Law was passed in 367 B.C., as Livy related, or much later, as some 
modern historians believe, (cf. Niese, “ Das sogenannte Licinisch-Sex- 
tische Ackergesetz,” Hermes, xxiii, 1888, pp. 410-423.) is unimportant 
for the purpose of this monograph. 


264 THE ROMAN COLONATE [254 


the ager publicus.* ‘Those who held possession of lands 
under the law,” said Appian, ‘‘ were required to take an oath 
to obey the law and penalties were fixed for violating it, and 
it was supposed that the remaining land would soon be 
divided among the poor in small parcels. But there was not 
the smallest consideration shown for the law or the oaths. 
The few who seemed to show some respect to them con- 
veyed their lands to their relations fraudulently, but the 
greater part disregarded it altogether.” * In the third cen- 
tury B. C. the law was sporadically enforced and fines were 
occasionally levied on those whose possessions in the ager 
publicus exceeded the legal maximum.* But by the time of 
the Gracchi it had become a dead letter.* 

The famous Gracchan reforms had important political 
consequences in that they ushered in the era of civil war 
which led to the overthrow of the Republic; but they wholly 
failed in effecting any permanent agrarian relief. The law 
of Tiberius of 133 B. C. renewed the old limitation to five 
hundred jugera and provided for a commission of three to 
distribute the surplus to the poor citizens in inalienable 
leaseholds of thirty ;ugera for which they were required to 
pay a moderate rent to the state.° From the increase in the 
census from 318,823 in 131 B. C.* to 394,736 in 125 B. C.' 
it is usually held that about 76,000 settlers were accommo- 
dated.* But after the death of Caius Gracchus the reac- 


1 Liv., vii, 16. 

2 Appian, Bel. Civ., 1, 8 Trans. by White. 

Liv. X; 13230 a7. 

* Plutarch, Tib. Gracch., 8. 

5 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 9-10; Bruns, Fontes, i, 3, 11, line 14; Plutarch, 
C. Gracch., 9. 

SLiv., Epit., lix. 

7 [bid., Ix. 

* Cf., Mommsen, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 335; Greenidge, op. cit., vol. i, p. 150. 


250] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 258 


tionary party came into power and proceeded to render the 
Gracchan legislation ineffective. The Gracchan colonists 
were allowed to sell their lands, which had been forbidden 
by the law of Tiberius; the land commission was abolished; 
all possessors of the ager publicus were given full propri- 
etorship of the land; and the vectigal, which had only been 
collected with indifferent success in the past, was abolished.* 
So thus most of the former ager publicus became in law as 
well as in practice the private property of the rich; and the 
threat of agrarian laws which had hung like a sword of 
Damocles over the possessions of the rich in the public 
domain was removed forever.* The last distribution of the 
ager publicus was made by Caesar in 59 B. C. Caesar’s 
law, however, merely concerned the settlement of 20,000 
colonists on the small tract of the public domain which still 
remained in Campania,® and, as in the case of the lands 
settled by the Gracchan colonists,* these lands were soon de- 
serted or sold and the private latifundia absorbed the last 
vestiges of the ager publicus in Italy.° 

So thus the efforts of land reformers and the agrarian 
laws had proved totally ineffective. The small farm which 
might have maintained Italian agriculture in a healthy con- 
dition disappeared and could not be reconstituted. Concen- 
tration of landed property continued. The tribune Marcius 
Philippus is reported to have said in 103 B. C. that there 
were not two thousand citizens in the state who possessed 


1 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 27; ‘Cic., Brut., 136; Lex Agraria of 111 B.C, 
lines 7-8, 19, in Hardy, Six Roman Laws (Oxford, 1911). 

2 Laboulaye, Histoire du droit de propriété (Paris, 1839), p. 73. Cf. 
Liv., vi, 11. “ Agrariis legibus, quae materia semper tribunis plebi 
seditionum fuisset.” 


3 Appian, Bel. Civ., ii, 10; Suet., Jul., 20. 
* Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 27. 
® Cic., C. Rull., ii, 82. 


a 


256 THE ROMAN COLONATE [256 


operty.. “All the money of all the nations has come into 
e hands of a few men,” said Cicero.” So great were some 
the latifundia that according to Columella the proprietors 
uld not make the circuit of their estates on horseback in 
day.* And this development which appeared to contem- 
taries as an incurable evil in Italy * with the Empire ex- 
rided to the provinces. ‘The latifundia have ruined Italy,” 
said Pliny, “‘and now they are ruining the provinces. Six 
landlords possessed half of Africa when the Emperor Nero 
had them executed.” ® | 
Agrarian laws had not been any more successful in 
checking the growth of slavery than in preventing the con- 
centration of landed property. But whereas the latifundia 
continued until the end of the Empire the Sclavenwirtschaft 
commenced to decay before the end of the Republic. Slav- 
ery had proved ruinous to agriculture and in many parts of 
Italy, especially in the South, it had given way to pasturage. 
But the discipline which could be maintained by the ergas- 
tula and the chain gang on the plantation was sadly lacking 
on the great cattle and sheep ranches. Slave herdsmen, fre- 
quently the half-savage remnants of barbarian tribes con- 
quered by the Romans,® roamed the great pasturelands of 


1 Cic., De Offic., ii, 73. “ Non esse in civitate duo milia hominum, qui 
rem haberet.” 


2 In Verr., ii, 5, 126. “...ad paucos homines omnium nationum pecu- 
nias pervenisse.” 


>Colum., De. R. R., i, 3. “...praepotentium, qui possident fines gen- 
tium, quos ne circumire equis quidem valent.” Cf. Hyginus, De Cond. 
Agr., (Ed. Lachmann) p. 115. 

*Tac., Ann., iii, 53-54; Senec., De Benef., vii, 10; Epist., 80. 

5 Plin., NV. H., xviii, 7. “Latifundia perdidere Italiam iam vero et pro- 
vincias. Sex domini semissem Africae possidebant, cum interfecit eos 
Nero princeps.” Cf. Florus, ii, 7, (iii, 19) 3. “ (Sicilia) terra... lati- 
fundiis civium Romanorum tenebatur.” 

® Caes., Bel. Gal., 1, 40. 


257] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 207 


southern Italy and Sicily, making life unsafe for the trav- 
eler or for the dwellers in unprotected homesteads and small 
villages." From the time of the Second Punic War siave 
revolts were common.” The terrible slave wars in Sicily at 
the end of the second century B. C.* fought with desperate 
ferocity by the slaves and punished with merciless sever.ty 
by the masters showed the Romans the danger which threat- 
ened Italy. At length in 73 B. C. the great servile revolt of 
Spartacus broke forth.“ For three years Rome was held in 
terror. Six Roman armies were defeated by the insurgent 
slaves under their valiant leader and at one time Spartacus 
marched on Rome itself at the head of 120,000 slaves. 
Finally, however, the slave army was defeated by Crassus. 
Most of the slaves were butchered in battle, while the 
prisoners were crucified, the crosses forming a continuous 
line from Capua to Rome.” 

The revolt of Spartacus forcefully called to the attention 
of the Romans the disadvantages of an agricultural system 
based on slavery. The slaughter of huge numbers of slaves 
created the first shortage of servile man-power which Italy 
had ever experienced,® while the internecine character of the 
‘war made the Roman proprietors realize that the old Latin | 
proverb quot servi, tot hostes was full of dreaded reality.' 
Agricultural writers were already declaiming against culti- 
vation by means of chained gangs of slaves, while pasturage 
by slave herdsmen had proved itself to be a constant menace 


1Diodor., xxxiv, 2; Valer. Max., 1i, 10, 2. 

2 Liv., xxxii, 26; xxxiii, 36; xxxiv, 29. 

3Diodor., xxxiv, 2; xxxvi, I-11. Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 9. Cf. Wallon, 
op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 299-317. 

4 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 116-120. 

5 [bid., 1, 120. 

® Cf. Davis, op. ctt., p. 241. 

1Cf. Wallon, op. cit., ii, 39; Frank, op. cvt., p. 203-204. 


258 THE ROMAN COLONATE [258 


to the safety of the community. Both methods of utilizing 
slave labor were dependent on continual fresh supplies of 
war captives, for the death rate among slaves was very high, 
especially with the Northern barbarians, and the birth rate 
very low. Although Caesar’s conquests brought in enor- 
mous new hordes of slaves, the diminution of foreign con- 
quests and the repression of piracy which came with the 
Empire seriously cut down the available supply. Conse- 
quently we find that the proprietors of the great estates in 
many districts ceased to depend solely on slave labor for the 
exploitation of their domains and gradually returned to the 
older system of cultivating their lands by means of small 
tenants or coloni. 

Probably even during the period of the greatest develop- 
ment of the slave-worked latifundia the small tenantry con-. 
tinued to exist in remote districts and in mountain valleys 
like Horace’s Sabine farm.* Terence, in the second century 
B. C. at the very heyday of slavery, mentioned the custom 
which proprietors had of dwelling in the city and renting 
out their land to tenants.* Cuincius, a century later, said that 
the ninth month of the year was called Mercedonius because 
tenants paid their rent (merces) in that month.* The ety- 
mology may not be correct, but the attempted explanation 
shows that the payment of rent in that month was an old 
custom and that the small tenantry must have been an ap- 
preciable element in the population during the whole period 
of the great extension of slavery.* Campania, also, seems 


1 Hor., Epist., i, 14, 1-3. Cf. Festus, verb. Saltus. 
* Terent., Adelph., v, 8, line 953. “ Agelli est hic urbe paulum, 
quod locitas foras. 


5 Cincius, De Fastis, 5, in Huschke, Jurisprud. Anteiust. Relig., 6th 
Ed., pp. 25-26. 


4Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problémes d’his- 
toire, p. II. 


259] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 2509 


never to have been absorbed by the great slave-worked lati- 
fundia, but instead to have been divided into small farms 
and leaseholds, for Cicero said that the whole Campanian 
land was cultivated and possessed by the plebeians.* 

Beginning, however, with the closing years of the Re- 
public the references to coloni became very much more 
numerous.” During the civil wars the coloni of the nobles 
formed by no means an inconsiderable element in their fol- 
lowing. Catiline’s coloni as well as his freedmen followed 
him in his special body-guard.* Domitius Ahenobarbus in 
the war between Caesar and Pompey manned seven vessels 
with his coloni, freedmen, and slaves in April 49 B. C.* 
and in July of the same year fitted out several more vessels 
with coloni and slave herdsmen.® Pompey, himself, col- 
lected an army from the Picenian farms, which were en- 
tirely occupied by this father’s clients.° In the time of 
Cicero municipalities might lease all their domains to coloni 
and support themselves completely by the rents thus ob- 
tained.’ Cicero frequently mentioned coloni in his writ- 

1 Cic., C. Rull., ii, 84. “Totus enim ager Campanus colitur et posside- 
tur a plebe, et a plebe optima et modestissima.” Cf. ibid., ii, 88. 

® Bolkestein (De Colonatu Romano, pp. 96-110) has assembled nearly 


150 texts referring to coloni and free agricultural labor during the 
period of the late Republic and the early Empire. 


8 Sall., Catil., lix. “...cum libertis et colonis propter aquilam absistit.” 


4 Caes., Bel. Civ., i, 34. “...profectum item Domitium ad occupandam 
Massiliam navibus actuariis septem, quas...servis, libertis, coloms 
suis compleverat.” 


5 Ibid., i, 56. “ Certas sibi deposcit naves Domitius atque has colonis 
pastoribusque quos secum adduxerat complet.” 


6 Vell. Paterc., ii, 29. “ Pompejus...ex agro Piceno, qui totus paternis 
ejus clientelis refertus erat, contraxit exercitum.” 


™Cic., Ad. Fam., xiii, 11. “(Quorum quidem omnia commoda omnes- 
que facultates...consistunt in iis vectigalibus, quae habent in provincia 
Gallia. Ad ea visenda pecuniasque, quae a colonis debentur, exigendas 
...legatos equites Romanos misimus.” Cf. Hyginus, De Cond. Agr., 
p.117. (Ed. Lachmann.) 


260 THE ROMAN COLONATE [260 


ings,’ and it is not at all unlikely, as Heitland contends, that 
Cicero’s own estates were leased in praediola to tenant 
farmers.” Cato’s De Agricultura had been based altogether 
on slave labor and looked askance upon any other kind of 
culture.* A century later the treatise of Varro was still 
principally intended for proprietors of slave-worked lat:- 
fundia, but he occasionally mentioned cultivation by coloni 
and the regulation of their leases (leges colomicas).* By 
the time of Columella, however, the tenant-farming system 
had become so common that Columella devoted a chapter to 
it. For lands which were still fertile and close enough to 
the capital to be constantly under the master’s eye he still 
favored slave-culture; but for all other lands he regarded 
coloni as preferable.” Vergil’s Georgics referred to the agri- 
culture of a free peasantry, not of a slave estate.° Seneca, 
decrying the enormous possessions which a few individuals 
owned, said that thousands of coloni plow and dig and sow 
in Sicily and Africa in order that one man’s stomach might 
be satisfied." The younger Pliny’s estates were cultivated 
by coloni; he had no chained slaves.* While by the time of 
the writers of the Digest not only was the tenant-farming 


1Cf. Pro Cluent., 175; 182; Pro Caec., 94; In Verr., ti, 3, 55; 228; 
Pro Plancio, 20. 


2 Cic., Ad Att., xiii, 9. “ Mihi Arpinum eundem est. Nam... opus 
est constitui a nobis illa praediola.” Cf. Heitland, op. ctt., p. 194, note 3. 


* Cato, De Agric., v, 4. “ Operarium, mercennarium, politorem diutius 
eundem ne habeat die.” Cf. Oliver, Roman Economic Conditions, p. 73. 


a MOTTO, ied ieee dy ee s ae, Peay 
> Colum., De R.R., i, 7. 
° Heitland, op. cit., p. 218. 


" Epist., cxiv, 26. “ Adspice quot locis vertatur terra, quot mzllia col- 
onorum arent fodiant: unum videri putas ventrem, cui et in Sicilia et 
in Africa seritur?” 


Srp line We bist. 1, 10 7°1Ks0375 3X, ged. 


261] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 261 


system customary everywhere but the slaves themselves 
were with increasing frequency given a holding of their 


1 IO aD 


own and treated as “ quasi coloni””’. 


1 Dig., Xxxili, 7, 12, 3. “ Servus qui quasi colonus in agro erat.” Cf. 
ibid., xxxili, 7, 18, 4; xxxiii, 7, 20, I. 


CHAPTER IX 
Tue ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 


THE most complete description of the condition of the 
Italian colonus of the early Empire is to be found in the 
writings of the great jurists. The colonus leased his land 
under a formal contract, known by the double word locatio- 
conductio, which was as binding to the lessor (locator) as 
to the lessee (conductor).* If either party of the contract 
violated his agreement the other could appeal to law for its 
enforcement.” The duration of. the lease was the period of 
the lustrum or five years.* At the end of that period the 
colonus might leave or renew the contract, just as he 
wished.* A formal renewal was not necessary, for if the 
colonus continued to cultivate the land it was considered a 
tacit reconductio.” His rent was a fixed amount payable 
usually in money.® Fustel de Coulanges maintained that 

1In the Digest the tenant-farmer is designated both by the words 
conductor and colonus, the former word denoting his legal relation to 
the proprietor and the latter his function as a cultivator. For detailed 


references see Heitland, Agricola, p. 364, note 5, and Fustel de Coul- 
anges, Recherches, p. 12, note 3. 


* Gaius, Instit., iii, 135. .“ Consensu fiunt obligationes in... locationibus 
conductionibus.” Jbid., iii, 137. “Item in his contractibus alter alteri 
obligatur de eo, quod alterum alteri ex bono et aequo praestare oportet.” 
Cf. Dig., xiv, 2, 9. 

3 Dig., xix, 2, 9, 1; 24, 2, “locare in quinquennium.” Jbid., xix, 2, 13, 
11, “post finitum lustrum.” Jbid., xlix, 14, 3, 6, “ peracto lustro.” 

RDgg)) Kix 2) 74> xixa raat: 

Pye RIK, 2,503, LE CURL LAS 

6 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. “...colono...qui ad pecuniam numeratam con- 
duxit;” ibid., xlvii, 2, 26. “...colonum qui nummis colat.” Cf. ibid., 
Kix, 2, 213 $15.52; Ol; xvii, I, 1,4 sexxxix, 5,0; 


262 [262 


263 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 263 


only leases which involved a money rent were included in 
the legal contract of locatio-conductio, basing his opinion 
principally on a decision of Gaius. ‘“‘ Unless a certain 
money rent is agreed upon,” said Gaius in his Institutes, 
“the contract of locatio-conductio does not exist.”* But 
Gaius in another place speaks of the partiarius colonus,? and 
all writers since Fustel de Coulanges have agreed that the 
share-rent lease constituted just as much of a legal contract 
as a lease requiring a money payment.* Yet, as the share 
rent contract is only mentioned once in the Digest while the 
lease for money rent is mentioned frequently, it is evident 
that the latter was more common in Italy during the early 
Empire. 

Many disputes naturally arose between the landlords and 
their tenants; and the decisions which the jurists handed 
down in regard to these mooted points constitute a whole 
title of the Digest, in which the rights and obligations of 
the landlords and their tenants are clearly defined. The 
most important obligation of the tenant was the proper 
cultivation of the soil. ‘‘ Before all,’’ said Gaius, “the 
colonus ought to see that all types of farm work are done 
each at its proper time, so that cultivation out of season 
may not cause the estate to deteriorate.’* “If a colonus 
_abandons the cultivation of the estate,” said Paulus, “ the 
landlord can immediately sue him in the courts.”° If he 

1 Gaius, Instit., iii, 142. “Locatio et conductio...nisi merces certa 
statuta sit non videtur contrahi.” Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., 
pp. 12-13. 

2 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. “Alioquin partiarius colonus, quasi societatis 
jure, et damnum et lucrum cum domino fundi partitur.” 

3 Cf. supra, p. 161. 

4 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 3. “ Ante omnia colonus curare debet ut opera rus- 
tica suo quoque tempore faciat, ne intempestiva cultura deteriorem 
fundum faceret.” 

5 Dig., xix, 2, 24, 2. “ Potest dominus si deserueret...fundi culturam 
colonus cum eo statim agere.” 


264 THE ROMAN COLONATE [264 


does not pay his rent he may be expelled, Paulus stated in 
another decision." The coloni were compelled to offer 
security of various kinds when they leased a farm, and this 
was forfeited in case they did not pay the rent or let the 
farm run down.” 

On the other hand, the tenant was protected against any 
disturbance of his lease, and, if he was not permitted to 
cultivate the land during the whole period of his lease, he 
could sue the landlord for damages.* In case of flood, 
earthquake, or the incursion of enemies the tenant received 
a total remission of rent, but the landlord was not respon- 
sible for losses due to unfavorable weather.* If the tenant 
made any permanent improvements on the estate he could 
indemnify himself for these out of his rent.° He had the 
right to sublet his tenement,® and in case of any legal pro- 
cedure with the landlord his oath was as valid as that of the 
prietor.’ Another evidence of the independent position 
of the colonus was his freedom to renew the lease or not 
at his pleasure. ‘‘ There is no doubt,” said Gaius, “that a 
colonus or inquilinus is permitted to relinquish his lease.” ” 
“It is easier to find tenants,” said the Emperor Hadrian in 
a rescript, ‘if they know that they will not be retained if 
they wish to leave at the end of the lustrum.” ° 

Thus the colonus of the Digest is seen to be markedly 


¥ DG. RIX 2, SA OY; 

9 Dig. XX; 0, 15 > XX, 1,81 Pr 

> Dig., xix, 2, 24, 4. Cf. sbid., xix, 2, 15, 8; 25, I. 

* Dig., xix, 2, 25, 63 15, 2. 

® Dig., xix, 2, 55, 1; 61, pr. 

* Dig., xix, 2, 24, 13 xii, 2, 30, 6. 

" Dig., xii, 2, 28, 6. 

® Dig., xix, 2, 25, 2. “Quin liceat colono vel inquilino relinquere 
conductionem nulla dubitatio est.” 


® Dig., xlix, 14, 3, 6. “Nam et facilius invenientur conductores, si 
scierint fore, ut si peracto lustro discedere voluerint, non teneantur.” 


t 


265 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 265 


different from the colonus of the Codes. The earlier colo- 
nus held a short-term lease while the later colonus was a 
perpetual tenant; the former, in Italy at least, ordinarily paid 
a money rent while the latter owed as rent payments in kind 
and services; and most important of all, the colonus of the 
Digest was perfectly free to leave his tenement at the expira- 
tion of his contract while the colonus of the fourth century 
was bound to the soil in perpetuity. | Yet, notwithstanding 
the fact that the Digest clearly represents the legal status of 
the colonus as that of a free and independent tenant who 
entered into a contract with his landlord on terms of equality, | 
the references to coloni which appear in contemporaneous 
literature make us doubt whether the actual condition of the 
coloni was as favorable as their legal status would seem to 
indicate; and there are statements in the Digest itself which 
are difficult to understand except as relating to a tenantry 
which was already rapidly approaching a dependent condi- 
tion. 

The passages quoted above,’ which relate how Catiline 
and Ahenobarbus enlisted their coloni along with their 
clients, freedmen, and slaves as their personal following in 
the civil wars, are very significant. The coloni here appear 
as personal dependants of the landlord. Many of them no 
doubt were freedmen themselves or the descendants of 
freedmen. The scanty information on rural affairs which 
has come down to us is altogether silent in regard to the 
freeing of agricultural slaves; yet the manumission of dili- 
gent members of the familia rustica must have been very 
common. In the time of the Republic it had not been cus- 
tomary to emancipate slaves in great numbers, but in the 
early Empire the manumission of slaves became so frequent 
that it had to be checked by the imperial authority, for the 
emperors did not wish to see the Roman body politic 


1 Cf. supra, p. 259. 


Was THE ROMAN COLONATE [266 


demoralized by an enormous influx of new citizens: But 
at the same time measures were passed which permitted in- 
formal manumission under the terms of which the slaves 
became freedmen of inferior grade. Augustus introduced 
the lex Aelia Sentia in 5 A. D. which formed a class of 
freedmen called dedititii who had the same rights and 
privileges as the dedititw proper, but not those of Roman 
citizens or Latin confederates.” Fourteen years later, by the 
lex Junia Norbana Tiberius created the Latin: Juniant, who 
were freedmen possessing the rights of Latins but were 
were not eligible for Roman citizenship.* That manumitted 
slaves became coloni on the estates of their former masters 
we have no direct evidence. But we know that freedmen 
were required to work for their patrons a certain portion 
of each day;* and the kind of work required was that to 
which the freedmen had been accustomed before their manu- 
mission.° Likewise we know that the libertim dedititu were 
not urban freedmen for they were not allowed to reside 
within a radius of one hundred miles of Rome.* It does 
not seem hazardous to conclude, therefore, that just as the 
urban freedman became the client of his master in the city, 
so the rural freedmen customarily became a small tenant 
working on the same estate which he had formerly culti- 
vated as a slave. 

It is true that the legal dependence of the freedmen on 
their patrons was not transmitted to their offspring; but it 


1 Cf. Hunter, Roman Law (4th Ed., London, 1903), pp. 178-182; Buck- 
land, The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 537-548. 


* Gaius, Instit., i, 13. 

3 Ibid., i, 22. 

* Dig., xxxviii, 1 (De Operis Libertorum), 1. “ Operae sunt diurnum 
officium.” 

5 Dig., XXXViii, I, 38. 

§ Gaius, Instit., 1, 27. 


267] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 207 


is very likely that the children of the freedmen tenants 
continued to cultivate the plots of land formerly leased to 
their fathers in very much the same condition, so that the 
extra-legal obligation to follow their landlords to battle was 
accepted by them as a matter of course. How humble and 
dependent the coloni were regarded is clearly indicated in a 
passage in Cicero’s oration in defense of Cluentus. Sassia, 
the mother of Cluentus, in attempting to implicate her son 
in the poisoning of his stepfather Oppianicus, instituted an 
investigation to collect evidence. But to membership in this 
investigating body Cicero charged that ‘“‘ she admitted, I will 
not say no man, lest you may perhaps say a colonus was 
present, but no respectable man.” * Coloni, then, in Cicero’s 
opinion were not boni virt and were too much under the 
control of their landlady to be capable of independent testi- 
mony. . 
Whatever the condition of the colonus at the beginning 
of the Empire may have been it is certain that it did not 
improve in the course of time. Debt was very common 
among the coloni and in many regions coloni became habitual 
debtor tenants. Cultivation of the soil by debtors was by 
no means a new situation in Italy. In early days many of 
the agricultural slaves were poor peasants who had lost their 
liberty on account of their debts.* Slavery for debt was 
eventually abolished but cultivation by debtor tenants con- 
tinued to be very common. Varro in enumerating the 
classes of agricultural labor said that besides the slaves, the 
peasant proprietors, and the day laborers there was an addi- 
tional class of men “whom our rustics call obaeratr”’.* 


1Cic., Pro Cluent., 182. “ Nullo adhibito non dicam viro, ne colonum 
forte adfuisse dicatis, sed bono viro.” 

? Liv., ii, 23; vi, 14. Dionys., Antigq., vi, 26. 

*Varro, R. R., i, 17, 2. “Omnes agri coluntur hominibus servis aut 
liberis aut utrisque. Liberis, aut cum ipsi colunt,..aut mercenariis... 
iiquie quos obaeratos nostri vocitarunt.” 


268 THE ROMAN COLONATE i [268 


Columella likewise mentioned debtor tenants along with 
slaves as the cultivators of the latifwndia.» Wallon be- 
lieved that Martial also was referring to the same situation 
when he coined the epigram, “ Heirs, do not bury the poor 
colonus; for earth, however little it is, rests heavily upon 
him ”’.? 

These vague references become considerably more signifi- 
cant when seen in the light of the clear evidence which the 
letters of the younger Pliny present. Pliny employed no 
manacled slaves on his estates * but cultivated his lands by 
means of coloni holding five-year leases and paying money 
rent. In two of his letters he complained that his tenants 
were unable to pay their rent and that he had been forced 
to make abatements.* But notwithstanding these abatements 
the arrears increased, and in addition he found that his 
tenants once hopelessly in debt made no effort to reduce 
their obligations. ‘‘ They even seize and consume all the 
produce of the land,” he wrote to his friend Paulinus, “ as 
men who now believe they should not stint themselves.” ° 

The situation set forth in these letters of Pliny was by no 
means confined to the estates of Pliny himself. In another 
letter Pliny described conditions on a neighbor’s estate 
which were even worse than on his own.° The neighboring 
landlord, instead of granting abatements in the rent as Pliny 


1Colum., De R. R., i, 3. “...occupatos nexu civium et ergastulis 
tenent.” i 
* Martial, Ep., xi, 14. 
Haeredes nolite brevem sepelire colonum: 
Nam terra est illi, quantulacumque, gravis.” 
Cf. Wallon, L’Esclavage dans l’antiquité, vol. ii, p. 378. 
* Epist., iii, 19. “...nec ipse usquam vinctos habeo.” 
4Tbid., ix, 37, “post magnas remissiones.” x, 8. “ Continuae sterili- 
tates cogunt me de remissionibus cogitare.” 
>Ibid., ix, 37. “ Rapiunt etiam consumuntque, quod natum est, ut 
qui iam putent se non sibi parcere.”’ 
6 Epist., ili, 19. 


269 | LHE\ADSCRIPTION TO. THE SOIL 269 


. had done, seized and sold the stock of the tenants which 


| 


they had pledged as security for their rent. But this policy, 
while it lessened the arrears of the coloni for the time being, 
proved to be short-sighted and disastrous in the long run, 
for without their former equipment the coloni were less able 
than before to pay their rent and their arrears mounted more 
rapidly than ever.* As a result of this ‘“ imbecile’ measure 
and “‘the general hard times” the estate which had for- 
merly been valued at five million sesterces was now offered 
for sale for three millions.” 

But it is in the Digest where the references to the indebt-: 
edness of the coloni are the most frequent. The Emperor 
Antoninus Pius issued several rescripts against granting 
remission of rent too easily, merely because the tenants 
complained of a small crop (de fructuum exiguitate) or that 
their grape vines were old (propter vestustatem vinearum) .* 
But in case of an unfruitful year (ob sterilitatem) there was 
nothing to do but to allow the tenant an abatement and hope 


- to receive the delinquent rent in succeeding years.* That 


the chance of recovering the back rent was an extremely 
meager one is seen from the constant references to the 
arrears of the coloni which appear in the Digest. In fact 
these debts became so general and of such long standing 
that the phrase cum reliquis colonorum was customarily in- 
cluded in the bequest of a landlord’s estate.” Interest was 


1 Ibid., “ Sed haec felicitas terrae imbecillis cultoribus fatigatur. Nam 
possessor prior saepius vendidit pignora et, dum reliqua colonorum 
minuit ad tempus, vires in posterum exhausit, quarum defectione rursus 
reliqua creverunt.” 

2Tbid., “Superest, ut scias, quanti videantur posse emi. Sestertio 
tricies, non quia non aliquando quinquagies fuerint, verum et hac pae- 
nuria colonorum et communi temporis iniquitate ut reditus agrorum sic 
etiam pretium retro abiit.” 

Ge six, 2,15, 5. 

#1. Kix, 2, 15, 4- 

5K. g., Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, pr. “(Codicillis ita scripsit: Postea mihi 


270 THE ROMAN COLONATE [270 


due on these back debts, which made the payment of them 
still more difficult for the tenant.’ 

Why was the colonus so likely to fall in debt? Seeck 
discussed this question and came to the conclusion that it 
was due to the poor quality of the tenants.” With the small 
farmer class destroyed by the concentration of property into 
latifundia, and the slave supply failing, the only source from 
which agricultural labor could be obtained was, according to 
Seeck, the “ dregs of the city proletariat’, who were more 
competent ‘‘to exercise their hands in the theatre and the 
circus, than in the wheat field and the vineyard”.* These 
coloni, as was to be expected, proved very lazy and ineffi- 
cient. The poor material of the tenantry Seeck believed 
made necessary the laws which are mentioned in the Digest 
in regard to the expulsion of the coloni before the expira- 
tion of their leases;* and it was the same lack of energy 
and application and the care-free disposition of the city 
rabble which made debt almost inevitable.° 

To what extent the landlords were able to recruit their 
coloni from the capital must remain a matter of conjecture, 
for our sources are altogether silent on this point. But, 
judging from the celerity with which veterans deserted 
lands * which were granted to them in full ownership and 


venit in mentem, Seiae fundos quos reliqui, ita ut sunt instructi rustico 
instrumento, suppellectile, pecore, et vilicis, cum reliquis colonorum, et 
apotheca, habere volo.” Cf. ibid., xxxii, 78, 3; 91; 97; IOI, 1; xXxxiil, 
2, 32, FT ZOO Si29, PES OT) tarot eye te 

1 Dig., X1xX, 2, 54, pr. 

*Seeck, Art. “Colonatus” in Pauly-Wissowa, Real Encyk., vol. iv, 
pp. 487-480. 

* Varro, R. R., ii, pr., 3. “ Manus movere...in theatro ac circo, quam 
in segetibus ac vinetis.” 

* Dig., Xix, 2, 54, I. 

5 Seeck, op. cit., p. 488. 

6 Cf. supra, p. 248. 


271 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO: THE SOIL 271 


not as leaseholds, it seems unlikely that any considerable 
part of the tenantry of the early Empire could have been 
obtained from the city rabble. They loved the excitement 
and the amusements of Rome too well to give them up for 
the “thankless labor’ of the fields, which caused even farm- 
bred boys to desert their homes.t What emigration from 
the city there was probably came early when the latifundia 
were first changing from slave culture to a small tenant 
system. By the first and second centuries slavery had given 
place in many districts to a free peasantry born and bred 
on the farm. Yet this is just the period when the refer- 
ences to debt are most numerous. Pliny said that it was a 
growing evil in his day’* and the decisions of the jurists 
during the second and third centuries constantly refer to it. 
Let us examine the explanation offered by Pliny and the 
Digest as to the origin of the debts of the coloni. “ The 
continuous unfrutfulness of the soil compels me to consider 
abatements of rent’, said Pliny in a letter to the Emperor 
Trajan.* Likewise it was the “‘universal hard times’ (com- 
mun. temporis wuquitate) and the “ poverty of the coloni ” 
(paenuria colonorum) which Pliny regarded as the cause of 
the fall in value of an estate of one of his neighbors from 
five million sesterces to three millions.“ Similarly in the 
Digest proprietors were warned by the jurists not to grant 
remission of the rents for trivial excuses, but if the reason 
was “unfruitfulness’ (ob sterilitatem) * the abatement 
must of necessity be granted. The scanty yield of the Ital- 
1Cf. supra, p. 248. Cf. the interpretation of Horace, Epist., i, 7, in 
Heitland, Agricola, p. 234. 


2Epist., ix, 37. “Occurrendum ergo augescentibus vitiis et meden- 
dum est.” 

8 Epist., x, 8. “Continuae sterilitates cogunt me de remissionibus 
cogitare.” 

4 Cf. supra, p. 260. 

5 Dig., xix, 2, 15, 4. 


272 THE ROMAN COLONATE [272 


ian fields which had brought about the wholesale desertion 
of many agricultural districts during the Republic remained 
as a continual source of anxiety to the patriotic Romans of 
the early Empire. In fact we learn from Columella that the 
prevailing view of the time was that the land was com- 
pletely exhausted. Not only was exhaustion of the soil the 
popular explanation of agricultural distress in the first cen- 
tury but men who were regarded as authoritative agricul- 
tural writers, such as Tremellius, whom Columella held in 
especially high esteem, believed that the Italian fields were 
completely worn out and sterile.* It was largely to combat 
this hopeless attitude toward farming which induced Colu- 
mella to write his treatise on husbandry. He refused to 
admit that the land had completely lost its fertility but felt 
that by more careful cultivation and especially by using 
more manure much of the ancient fruitfulness of the Italian 
soil might be restored.* ‘But debtor tenants were the last 
persons in the world to be able to profit by the advice of 
Columella, excellent though it was. To restore the fertility 
of exhausted soil requires capital and time. Debtor tenants 
had neither. As soon as their arrears with the accrued in- 
terest reached a sum which it appeared impossible for them 
to pay, the majority, like the tenants of Pliny, “ seized and 
consumed all the produce of the land as men who now be- 
lieved they should not stint themselves.” * 

The consequences of the indebtedness of the coloni were 


1Colum., De R.R., i, pr. 

* Tbid., ii, 1; cf. Simkhovitch, Pol. Sct. Quart., xxxi (1916), pp. 209-2II. 

*Colum., De R. R., ii, 1. Tacitus likewise refused to admit that the 
Italian soil has become barren. ‘He lamented over the fact that Italy 
could no longer provision her legions as in the past but laid the blame 
of scanty crops to the wrath of heaven, and the dependence on African 
and Egyptian grain to the perversity and shiftlessness of a stiff-necked 
generation. Cf. Tac., Ann., xii, 43; ili, 54. 

4 Plin., Epist., ix, 37. Cf. supra, p. 268. 


273] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 273 


very important in the future development of tenancy. It is 
certain that a condition such as that which existed on Pliny’s 
estates was neither profitable to the tenants nor to the pro- 
prietor. Pliny was a gentleman and a man of letters and 
not a hard-fisted dirt farmer like Cato, yet he was not a little 
concerned over the luckless plight of his tenants. He finally 
decided that the best way to meet the situation was to make 
a radical change in the form of his rent. So he entered into 
agreements with his coloni to receive their rent in shares 
rather than in money.* “There is no juster form of rent,” 
he said, “ than that which the earth, the climate, and the 
seasons yield.” * Since the share of the coloni was directly 
proportional to the size of the crop, they could be expected 
to do their best to produce as large a crop as possible; and 
so far as the landlord was concerned, while the value of his 
share may have been less than the old money rent, yet at 
least he was assured of something better than the promis- 
sory notes of his tenants. But since share rent afforded 
much more opportunity to the coloni to defraud the land- 
lord than under the former system when a fixed money rent 
was required, it was necessary to appoint overseers to see 
that the coloni did their work honestly and turned over the 
agreed share of the harvest to the proprietor. For this work 
- of supervision Pliny employed certain of his slaves. “It is 
a work,” he said, “which requires great honesty, sharp 
eyes, and many hands. But the experiment ought to be 
made and, just as in an old disease, the remedy of a change 
of some sort ought to be tried.”’ ® 

1 Epist., ix, 37. “Occurrendum ergo augescentibus vitiis et medendum 
est. Medendi una ratio si non nummo sed partibus locem.” 


2 Tbid., ““Nullum iustius genus reditus, quam quod terra, caelum, 
-annus refert.” 


8 [bid., “ Ex meis aliquos operis exactores, custodes fructibus ponam... 
Ad hoc magnam fidem, acres oculos, numerosas manus poscit. Ex- 
periundum tamen et, quasi in veteri morbo, quaelibet mutationis auxilia 
‘temptanda sunt.” 


274 THE ROMAN COLONATE [274 


This is the only actual account we have of a change from 
money rent to rent in shares. Yet such changes must have 
been very common where the tenants were unable to pay 
their rent in money. Money rent was universal in Italy at 
the beginning of the Empire but from the time of Nero we 
commence to hear of payments in kind, and by the time of 
Diocletian even taxes were paid in produce. Columella men- 
tioned the requirement to furnish wood and other parvae 
accesstiones as customary incidents in the tenure of the 
coloni of his day.* Tacitus, in describing the German slave, 
said “the lord requires from him a certain quantity of grain, 
cattle, or cloth just as from a colonus”’.* Evidently, then, 
in 98 A. D., when Tacitus wrote the Germamia, the colonus 
was accustomed to make such payments in kind. Similar 
payments were likewise mentioned by Martial, whose Epi- 
grams were also published in the last decade of the first 
century. The Pelignian colonus furnished wine,* the Um- 
brian colonus chickens, eggs, figs, goats, olives, and vege- 
tables,* and the colonus of Baia honey, cheese, dormice, 
goats, capons, and osier baskets.’ 

The substitution of payments in kind for money rent was 
an important step in lowering the status of the colonus. In 


1De R. R.,i, 7. “ Lignis et ceteris parvis accessionibus exigendis... cui 
colonum obligaverit.” 
*Tac., Germ., 25. “Frumentum modum dominus aut pecoris aut 
vestis ut colono iniungit.” 
ae Pt xi, aT 20, 
il os bY 
5 Ep., iii, 58. 
Fert ille ceris cana cum suis mella 
Metamque lactis Sassinate de silva; 
Somniculosos ille porrigit glires, 
Hic vagientem matris hispidae fetum, 
Alius coactos non amare capones. 
Et dona matrum vimine offerunt texto 
Grandes proborum virgines colonorum. 


275 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 275 


the passage from the Germania referred to above Tacitus 
wrote, ‘The lord requires from him (his dependent) a cer- 
tain quantity of grain, cattle, or cloth just as from a colo- 
nus; and he appears as a slave to that extent.’* Just as the 
commutation of customary services and payments in kind 
into money rents played a significant part in the emancipa- 
tion of the medieval villein, so the opposite substitution had 
an equally important effect in gradually increasing the de- 
pendence of the Roman tenantry. The work of the coloni 
was now supervised by slave custodes,? and in many ways 
the coloni were very closely associated with the familia rus- 
tica.* It was the function of the wilicus to see that the 
coloni like the agricultural slaves, were roused early. “ For 
it is of great importance,” said Columella, ‘that the coloni 
should begin their work as soon as morning begins to dawn 
and not dally lazily in getting started.’* They probably 
were included among the rustict who ate at the proprietor’s 
table along with the familia rustica.’ Their tools, livestock, 
and other equipment were usually furnished by the landlord,° 
while like the medieval serf they were expected to use the 
bakery and mill of the landlord’s villa.’ 


1Germ., 25. “Frumenti modum dominus aut pecoris aut vestis ut 
colono iniungit; et servus hactenus paret.” 


2 Plin., Epist., ix, 37. “ Ex meis aliquos operis exactores, custodes fruc- 
tibus ponam.” 


® Cf. C. I. L., ix, 3675. “ Atiliae (Restut(a)e Alfenus Atticus coniugi 
b(ene) m(erenti) et familia Tironianensis (id est fundi Tironiani) 
colon(a)e b(ene) m(erenti) p(osuit).” 

*De R. R., xi, 1, 14. “ Plurimum enim refert colonos a primo mane 
opus aggredi, nec lentos per otium pigre procedere.” 

5 Ibid., xi, 1, 18. “‘Consuescatque rusticos circa larem domini, focum- 
que familiarem semper epulari.’ Possibly this was the case only when 
they were performing services on the demesne, if Weber’s hypothesis is 
correct. Cf. Weber, Die romische Agrargeschichte, pp. 244-245. 

a Digixix, 2) 3; xix, 2, I9,'2; xxxill, 7, 24; Cf. xxxiil, 7,;.20, I and 3; 
ivi. 1,52, 2. 

™ Colum., De R. R., i,6, 21. “\Circa villam deinceps haec esse oportebit : 
furnum et pistrinum quantum futurus numerus colonorum postulaverit.” 


276 THE ROMAN COLONATE [276 


—_ 


Heitland argues with much plausibility that one of the 
effects of the indebtedness of the coloni was their subjection 
to a certain specified amount of labor on the home farm.’ 
Abatements in rent may have been allowed in return for 
work on the lord’s demesne during the busy seasons. There 
is no text which specifically refers to such a substitution of 
operae for money payments, yet it is difficult to understand 
some of the passages just quoted from Columella except as 
referring to coloni cultivating the lord’s demesne under the 
direction of his vilicus. Free day-laborers were rarely men- 
tioned after the time of Varro, and as slaves became scarce 
the only labor which was available to supply the gaps in the 
working forces of the villa was that of the tenantry. Coloni 
were used for that purpose in Africa? and it seems to be a 
reasonable assumption that the same policy was followed on 
many of the estates in Italy. 

Could the tenant who was in arrears leave his tenement 
at the expiration of his lease? Scaevola answered this ques- 
tion indirectly in a decision in the Digest. “A man be- 
queathed his estate together with the arrears of his coloni. 
The question is raised whether the words ‘ with the arrears 
of his coloni’ of the phrase written above include those 
who, after their lease had expired and after they had pro- 
vided cautio, had left their holdings. He (Scaevola) an- 
swered that the arrears of these coloni were not included in 
the will.’ * The important point for our purpose in the de- 
cision of Scaevola concerns the nature of the cautio which 


1 Agricola, pp. 256-257. 

2 Cf. supra, pp. 139, 143, 148, 174-175. 

* Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3. “ Praedia ut instructa sunt cum... reliquis 
colonorum (legavit); quaesitum est an reliqua colonorum qui, finita 
conductione interposita cautione, de colonia discesserant, ex verbis sup- 
rascriptis legato cedant. Respondit non videri de his reliquis esse 
cogitatum.” 


2777 | PHEIADSCRIPTION FO THE SOIL 277 


must be provided before a tenant could leave his holdings. 
Fustel de Coulanges, taking the ordinary meaning of cautio 
as “bail” or “ surety’, held that it was necessary for some 
rich man to offer to guarantee the debt of the colonus be- 
fore it was possible for him to leave his landlord’s estate; 
and as few men of means would be willing to serve as spon- 
sors for coloni who were hopelessly in debt, the arrears of 
the coloni, therefore, practically tied them to the soil.’ 
However Cug and other savants in Roman law have shown 
that cautio as a legal term merely meant a kind of promis- 
sory note, so that this passage from Scaevola cannot be in- 
terpreted to indicate that indebted coloni were bound to the 
soil by their debts.” 

We can find no sure trace of any legal attachment to the 
soil before the legislation of Constantine; yet there unde- 
niably was a tendency toward long and perhaps hereditary 
tenures, The proprietors usually found it to their advan- 
tage to keep the same tenants as long as possible and their 
children after them. It was no easy matter to find new 
tenants who would make satisfactory coloni. Pliny ob- 
tained a thirty-day leave from his duties as governor of 
Bithynia for that purpose.* Columella advised proprietors 
against changing tenants frequently, and considered coloni 
born and bred on an estate and retained throughout their 
whole lives as the most satisfactory.*. The transient tenant, 
caring nothing for the future productivity of the soil, was 
likely to exploit it for as much immediate profit as the land 
would yield and after it was exhausted go elsewhere; but 


1 Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches, pp. 17-18. Cf. supra, p. 153. 

2Cf. supra, p. 162. 

* Piityd pist., x, 8 (24). 

*De R.R., i, 7, 3. “ Patrisfamilias felicissimum fundum esse, qui 
colonos indigenas haberet, et tanquam in paterna possessione natos, 
jam inde a cunabilis longa familiaritate retineret.” 


278 THE ROMAN COLONATE [278 


when land was left in the hands of the same family it was 
cultivated much less wastefully. 

Of the means employed by the landlords to keep their 
coloni on their estates, we have no information. The ten- 
ant in debt was in no position to act freely and in all proba- 
bility cautiones were accepted by the proprietor with extreme 
reluctance, and possibly only when the tenant could be 
trusted to meet his back payments eventually. One thing 
which is certain is that the tenants were frequently retained 
by force on their leaseholds after the expiration of their 
contracts, for there were many imperial rescripts against the 
practice.” As a rule, however, tenants were probably kept 
on the same estate by custom and their own interests rather 
than by force. As time went on the coloni came to feel a 
strong sense of ownership over tenements which they had 
held for some years and which possibly their fathers before 
them had cultivated. They even went so far as to object to 
the sale of an estate to a new proprietor, and if the new 
landlord should expel the disaffected coloni from their hold- 
ings they could appeal to law against dispossession; and 
according to the jurists Marcellus and Papinian, the law 
supported the coloni in their rights to continued possession 
of their tenements even against the will of the landlord.* 

Whether the coloni ever held perpetual leases before the 
legislation of the fourth century we cannot say, for the 
sources are again silent on this point. The perpetua con- 


1 Cod. Just., iv, 65, 11. (244 A.D.) “Invitos conductores seu heredes 
eorum post tempora locationis impleta non esse retinendos saepe rescrip- 
tum est.” Cf. Dig., xlix, 14, 3, 6. “Divus etiam Hadrianus in haec 
verba rescripsit: ‘ Valde inhumanus mos est iste, quo retinentur con- 
ductores...publicorum agrorum, si tantidem locari jnon possint.””. 
This latter rescript, however, probably refers to the capitalist lessees 
of the imperial domains rather than to the small tenants. Cf. infra, 
p. 306. 


2 Marcellus in Dig., xliii, 16, 12. Papinian in Dig., xliii, 16, 18. 


279] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 279 


ductio is mentioned once in the Institutes of Gaius,: and 
once in a rescript of the Emperor Gordian in 239 A. D.,’ 
but in both cases the conductor referred to appears to have 
been a large lessee and not a colonus. But re-leasing was 
very common. No formal contract was necessary either 
verbal or in writing. The simple agreement of each party 
was sufficient.* \ le neither party raised any questions about 
the contract at the time of the expiration of the lease their 
mutual silence constituted an automatic renewal. | “He who 
leases a tenement for a certain time remains a colonus after 
the expiration of the lease,” said Ulpian.* Certain epitaphs 
of coloni which have been preserved to our day show that 
tenant farmers remained for as long as fifty years cultivat- 
ing the same holding.® 


1 InStit., iii, 145. 
2 Cod. Just., iv, 65, 10. 


3 Dig., xix, 2,14. “ Et hujus modi contractus neque verba neque scrip- 
turam utique desiderant, sed nudo consensu convalescunt.” 

* Dig., xix, 2, 14. “Qui ad certum tempus conducit, finito quoque 
tempore, colonus est.” Cf. iid., xix, 2, 13, 11. “In ipso anno quo 
tacuerunt, videantur eandem locationem renovasse.” 

5C.I.L., ix, 3674. “T. Alfeno Attico...colono f(undi) Tironiani, 
‘quem coluit ann(os) n(umero) L.” I[bid., x, 1877. ‘‘Q. Insteio Dia- 
dumeno Augustali...coluit annis XXXXV.” JIJbid., x, 1918. “ Afranio 
Felici...q(ui) coluit ann(os) XXIII.” 

It is in the light of these conditions that we can best study the two 
third-century texts in the Digest which have led many scholars to 
regard the servile colonate as an institution which existed before the 
legislation of the Codes. (Cf. supra, pp. 31, 58, 100, 193.) The decision 
of Ulpian (Dig., L, 15, 4, 8), that “if any proprietor does not register his 
inquilinus or his colonus he will himself be held answerable to the 
authorities of the census,” does not seem to imply more than a careful 
supervision of the census returns by the landlords before the reform 
of Diocletian put the administration of the census under the control 
of state officials. (Cf. Savigny, Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii, pp. 42-43.) 
The decision of Marcian (Dig., xxx, I, 112, pr.), that “if anyone be- 
queaths inquilini without the estate to which they belong the bequest is 
null and void,” cannot indicate that the tenant farmers were legally 
attached to the soil at this time, for the rescript of Philip of 244 A.D. 


280 THE ROMAN COLONATE [280 


Not only was the declining productivity of the soil an 
important cause in transforming the condition of the coloni, 
but it also had an equally significant effect on the condition 
of the agricultural slaves. The old military system of hand- 
ling slaves in groups of ten (decuriae) each under its own 
slave driver (decurio) may have proved the most profitable 
method of exploiting the land while the fertility of the soil 
was still unimpaired. But after the soil commenced to lose 
its native richness the disadvantages of this purely exploi- 
tative system commenced to become apparent. Pliny the 
Elder held that the cultivation of land by slaves from the 
ergastulum was “the very worst plan of all”’,* while the 
younger Pliny said that neither he nor any of his neighbors 
employed chained slaves on their estates.” In fact it was 
the failure of the chain gang and the ergastulum which had 
caused many proprietors to supplant slavery on their estates 
by a small tenant system, first on the poorer land * and later 
on the whole estate, for self-interest caused the tenant to 
cultivate the land less wastefully, particularly where he re- 
garded his tenure as a permanent one. 

However, possibly on a miajority of estates, cultivation 
by slaves continued as the principal form of agriculture. 
But beginning about the last century of the Republic there 
was a marked change in the treatment of ‘the slaves. They 
were given some property of their own (peculium) and were 
encouraged to marry and have children, both of which, ac- 
renewed the old edict that the tenantry could not be retained on an 
estate after the expiration of their leases. (Cod. Just. iv, 65, 11.) Yet 
the decision of Marcian does show that by this time the tenants were 
so closely tied to an estate by bonds of mutual interest and custom 


that there was no thought of separating them from their holdings even 
on the occasion of the death of the proprietor. 


1Plin., NV. H., xviii, 7. “Coli rura ab ergastulis pessumum est.” 


2 Plin., Epist., iii, 19. “...nam nec ipse usquam vinctos habeo nec ibi 
quisquam.” 


3 Cf. supra, p. 260. 


281 | IHE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 281 


cording to Varro, “ would make them more steady and 
attach them to the estate”.* Later they were given plots 
of land which they cultivated as tenants of their master. 
Such slaves were called “ quasi coloni’’,? they were not in- 
cluded in the inventory of the estate any more than the 
coloni,” they paid a fixed rent,* and like the coloni they 
might fall in arrears in their rent to their landlord and 
master.© So, just as the necessities of agriculture were 
gradually transforming the coloni with short-term leases 
into perpetual tenants, in practice if not in law, the same 
forces were transforming the agricultural slaves into tenants 
who, however different they might be in the eyes of the law, 
in their economic condition were growing more and more 
like the coloni with each succeeding generation. 

The tendency in the direction of long-term or perpetual 
tenure in the interests of the conservation of the soil was 
probably more consciously guided on the imperial domains 
than on most private latifundia. It is true that emperors 
like Nero and Domitian regarded their possession as pleas- 
ure estates and cared little what would happen to them in 
the future. But such was not the attitude of Vespasian, 
Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, emperors who 
were fully cognizant of the serious situation in which agri- 
culture found itself and who took vigorous steps to build 
up a state peasantry on the imperial domains.° Vespasian 

1Varro, R. R., i, 17, 5. “...dandaque opera ut habeant peculium et 


coniunctas conservas, e quibus habeant filios; eo enim fiunt firmiores ac 
coniunctiores fundo.” 


2 Dig., Xxxiii, 7, 12, 3. “ Servus, qui quasi colonus in agro erat...” 

8 Dig., loc. cit., xxxili, 7, 18, 4. 

4 Dig., xxxiii, 7, 18, 4. 

5 Dig., XXxXili, 7, 20, 1 and 3. 

6 The Emperor Tiberius had lamented mournfully over the agricultural 
desolation of Italy and the complete dependence of the Roman popula- 
tion upon foreign food supplies, (Tacitus, Ann., 11, 54), but so far as 
we know he proposed no constructive remedies to improve the situation. 


280 THE ROMAN COLONATE [282 


caused the domains to be surveyed, boundary stones to be 
set up, and when private estates had encroached on the do- 
mains he saw that the land was restored to the crown.*> The 
domains were then settled by peasants who became colont 
imperatoris.” The development of a state peasantry on the 
imperial domains was temporarily checked during the reign 
of the tyrant Domitian, who interested himself in making 
gardens * of some of the crown estates and allowed many 
of the others to fall into utter ruin.* But Nerva, during 
his short reign, immediately returned to the policy of Vespa- 
sian. “To the very poor Romans,” said Cassius Dio, “ he 
granted allotments of land worth as much as fifteen million 
(drachmae).” ° Settlers were sought for the former “ gar- 
dens’ of the prince by Trajan,® while further assignments 
of land were made by Trajan, Hadrian,’ and probably An- 
toninus Pius,*> whom the Digest shows to have been es- 
pecially watchful of the interests of the coloni Caesaris. 


1Gromatict Veteres (Ed. Lachmann), i, p. 211, Calabria. “Ab imp. 
Vespasiano censita;” zbid., p. 261-262. ‘Apulia et Calabria. “...col- 
lectione petrarum...et naturalibus signatis lapidibus;” zbid., p. 122. 
“ Lapides...inscripti nomine divi Vespasiani sub clausula tali, occupati 
a privatis fines: P. R. restituit.” 

*Jbid., p. 230, Abella. “Coloni vel familia imperatoris Vespasiani 
iussu eius acceperunt.” Jbid., p. 236, Nola. “‘Colonis et familiae (Ves- 
pasiani) est adiudicatus (ager).” 

3 Plin., Paneg., 50, 6. 

‘ Ibid., 50, 3. “...foeda vastitate procumbant.” 

5 Cassius Dio, Ixviii, 2, 1. “roig re wdvu wévnor TOv ‘Popuaiov é¢ yeAcdda 
Kal revtakociag pupiddas yHe KTHoLw Exapioaro,’’ 

6 Plin., Paneg., 50, 6. “ Nunc princeps in haec eadem dominos quaerit 
ipse inducit; ipsos illos magni aliquando imperatoris hortos...” 

™Gromatici Veteres, i, p. 236. Ostensis ager. “Ab imppp. Vespas- 
iano, Traiano, et Hadriano...colonis eorum adsignatus.” Jbid., p. 234. 
Laurum Lavinia. ‘“ Ager eius ab imppp. Vespasiano, Traiano et Adriano 
in lacineis est adsignatus.” I[bid., p. 235. LLanuvium. “Imp. Hadrianus 
colonis suis agrum adsignari iussit.” 

BIS ed (IQ) 3 Ds. Lan Lae es 


283] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 283 


“Such is the bounty of the Prince arid such is the tran- 
quility of the present age that he thinks us subjects worthy 
of enjoying what emperors have enjoyed,” said Pliny in his 
Panegyric to Trajan. But the emperors did not make these 
assignments of land out of their domains simply from the 
goodness of their hearts, as Pliny implied. Wealthy private 
citizens might use their estates in Italy as hunting grounds 
or parks,? and pleasure-seeking monarchs like Nero and 
Domitian might neglect the interests of the realm to satisfy 
their own personal vanity. But the wiser emperors saw that 
the decline in agriculture must be checked if the imperial 
revenues were not to be dried up at their source. Hence 
they tried every legal means to insure the continuous cultiva- 
tion of their domains. The actor, the slave or freedman 
manager of the agricultural slaves of a domain, could not 
be sold * or alienated* from an estate of the crown without 
the consent of the emperor. If the actor should be sold the 
law declared the sale null and void,® and if he should be 
emancipated and then leave he would lose his freedom.° 
Such forcible means of retaining agricultural laborers on 
the domains of course could not be legally applied to coloni, 
who were freemen, although probably force was occasionally 
employed by too zealous procuratores." But attempts were 
made to hold them by giving them certain rights and privi- 


1 Paneg., 50, 7. “Tanta benignitas principis tanta securitas temporum 
est, ut ille nos principalibus rebus existimet dignos.” 

2“ Voluptaria praedia.” Dztg., vii, 1, 13, 4. Cf. Heisterbergk, Die 
Entstehung des Colonats, pp. 67-68; Heitland, Agricola, pp. 365-366. 

3 Dig. xlix, 14, 46, 7. 

PiG., Kix, 14, 30. 

5 Dig., xlix, 14, 46, 7. “Et si veneant (actores), venditio nullas vires 
habebit.” 


6 Dig., xlix, 14, 30. “Si manumissi fuerint (actores), revocantur ad 
servitutem.” 


7 Cf. supra, p. 278, n. 1. 


284 THE ROMAN COLONATE [284 


leges which made their condition a particularly favored one. 
The Emperor Antoninus provided that they should receive 
special police protection from the imperial procuratores 
themselves." They were allowed to bring their disputes 
directly before the procuratores, thus relieving them of the 
tedious processes of the ordinary courts of law;? and ii 
they were unable to secure satisfaction from the procura- 
tores it was always possible to appeal to Caesar, sometimes 
with excellent results as the inscriptions of Souk-el-Khmis 
and Gazr-Mezuar testify. From the middle of the second 
century the imperial coloni received certain exemptions from 
municipal taxes, as it was feared that the payment of these 
might interfere with the prosperity of the domain,* while 
in the third century they were completely relieved of 
municipal munera, “ that they might be more suitable tenants 
for the domains of the fiscus,’ as the jurist Callistratus 
phrased it.° 

The tendency in the direction of a settled and hereditary 
peasant class probably existed in all parts of the Roman 
world, in Italy as well as in the provinces. The development 
must have differed considerably in different parts of the 
Empire, for the agrarian conditions in the various provinces 
were very clissimilar and the contrast was striking between 
the Italian tenant, who held a short-term lease and paid a 
money rent, and the African colonus or the Egyptian yewpyés, 
to whom the contract of locatio-conductio was unknown. 
Unfortunately, we have only a comparatively few records 


1) 949.,1.4; £0, 1s 1s 

2 Dig., xliii, 8, 2, 4. “Sed si forte de his sit controversia, praefecti 
eorum judices sunt.” 

3 Cf. supra, pp. 142, 143. 

* Dig., L, 1, 38, 1. “...colonos praediorum fisci muneribus fungi sine 
damno fisci oportere.” 


5 Dig., L, 6, 6, 11. “‘Coloni quoque Caesaris a muneribus municipalibus 
liberantur, ut idoniores praediis fiscalibus habeantur.” 





285 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 285 


of the many individual measures taken in various parts of 
the Roman world to establish a settled peasant class. Yet 
enough have been preserved for us to be able to trace the 
general trend with some degree of assurance; and we be- 
lieve that the legal attachment of the coloni to the soil was 
merely the last step in a series of measures taken with the 
object of maintaining the continuous cultivation of the land. 
If a settled peasantry already existed in a province Rome at 
first did litthe more than continue the pre-Roman policies. 
If the heavy drain of the Roman tribute proved too much 
for land where the soil was thin and caused it finally to be 
deserted as unprofitable, abatements of rent and encourage- 
ments of various sorts were offered to reclaim the abandoned 
land and restore it to its former productivity. And when 
encouragements failed, force was applied both to the wealthy 
proprietor and to the poverty-stricken peasant to keep the 
land in constant cultivation. 

If the country which Rome conquered had previously had 
a satisfactory system of raising revenue the Roman admin- 
istration ordinarily left it intact; and as most of the revenue 
was derived from some sort of a land tax the condition of 
the agricultural population and its relation to the fiscal ad- 
ministration remained very much the same as it had been 
before the Roman occupation. This certainly was the case 
in Sicily, Asia Minor, and Egypt, as Rostovtzeff has shown.* 
{n Sicily, from the time of the Syracusan tyrant Hiero II, 
the state assumed ownership of all the land of the island 
charging the cultivators as rent one-tenth of the produce 
which it collected by means of tax-farmers.” After the 


1Cf. supra, pp. 212, 216, 218. Likewise, in Gaul, Guizot believed that 
the Roman conquest made little difference in the status of the agricultural 
population. Cf. Guizot, Cours d’histoire moderne, iv, p. 249; Rostowzew, 
Studien, p. 381. 


2 Cicero, In C. Verr., ti, 3, 13. 


226 THE ROMAN COLONATE [286 


Roman conquest the land passed into the ownership of the 
Roman state and the Sicilian peasants remained permanent 
tenants on state land as before, and paid the tithe under the 
name of decuma now instead of Sexdrny. The coloni at times 
might be burdened with heavier payments under a corrupt 
proconsul, such as Verres, but the indignation of Cicero 
shows that this was altogether contrary to the usual policy; * 
and there is no doubt that the Sicilian coloni had less to fear 
in the way of arbitrary exactions under the early Empire 
than under the Republic. 

Likewise in Asia Minor the Roman conquest was little 
more than a change of overlords so far as the peasants were 
concerned. They appear as permanent residents of little 
agricultural villages in the inscriptions of the third and 
fourth centuries B. C.,? and probably had existed in a simi- 
lar state previous to the Greek and Persian conquests.*® 
Some were tenants on the public domain and some on 
municipal or private estates, but they were all subject to a 
uniform tax (¢épos) paid usually in kind.* The grain tithe 
continued to be paid after the Roman conquest, and when 
the Roman tax-farmers forced the peasantry to pay more 
than the customary amount the surplus was returned to them 
by Julius Caesar, while they were permitted to pay the tithe 
to the native tax-gatherers.° Three centuries later, the 
Ormelian inscriptions show the coloni still cultivating the 
land under the direction of government functionaries and 


1 Cicero, Op. ctt., 11, 3, 25. 

2For the Laodice inscription, see above p. 206; for references to 
more recently discovered documents containing accounts of villages being 
granted or sold by the Seleucids intact, see Westermann, Class Philol., 
Xvi (1921), pp. 12-17, 391-392. 

3 Cf. Westermann, Am. Hist. Rev., xx (1915), pp. 733-734. 

4 For references see Rostowzew, Studien, p. 247; Schulten, Adhandl. d. 
Gott. Ges. d. Wiss., Philol.-Histor. Klasse, ii (1897), p. 46. 

5 Appian, Bel. Civ., v, 4; cf. Cicero, Ad. Att., v, 13, 1; Pro Flac., 109. 


287 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 287 


living in village communities each with its own officers, 
priests, and common fund.* 

In Egypt the Romans found a system of agricultural ad- 
ministration admirably fitted for their purposes. The fertile 
Nile valley had been used by the Hellenistic monarchs to 
produce a large revenue for themselves and every step had 
been taken to insure the steady cultivation of the land. The 
peasants were not bound to the soil—in fact they held short- 
term or precarious leases—but they were completely under 
the control of administrative officials and the principle of 
iSta kept them constantly within the tax supervision of their 
registration district. It was a system which had operated 
with conspicuous success in the past, and so far as we are 
able to discover, the condition of the agricultural population 
did not change materially in the first centuries of Roman 
rule. The yewpyot continued to live in village communities 
with their own officers who were responsible to the admin- 
istration officials for the supply of the heavy government 
liturgies and rents in kind, just as under the régime of the 
Ptolemies.* 

Whether the Romans after their conquest of Africa 
merely continued the Carthaginian system of land tenure or 
introduced one which they devised themselves it is impossible 
to state because of our complete ignorance of the condition 
of the African peasantry under Carthaginian rule. But the 
African inscriptions, brought to light in the last half-century, 
reveal beyond the question of a doubt that there existed in 
the African latifundia of the second century a settled and 
indigenous tenantry, who, though not bound to the soil, nor- 


1Sterrett, An Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor, pp. 48-57. Cf. 
supra, pp. 203, 218-2719. 

2 Cf. supra, pp. 213-215. 

3 For references see Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 81-82, 163, 218-219; De 
Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum, pp. 60-64. 


288 THE ROMAN COLONATE [288 


mally had no thought of leaving their native fields. It was a 
condition similar to that which had apparently existed from 
the earliest times in Egypt and Asia Minor and toward which 
economic forces were already bringing the short-term tenant 
of the Italian domains. The head tenants (conductores) 
of the African domains, it is true, held the regular five-year 
lease. But we have no record that the coloni, the actual 
cultivators of the fields, held leases of any kind. In fact 
everything points to the conclusion that they did not. When 
the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus complained of the en- 
croachments of the conductor they did not say that he had 
exceeded the terms of their leases, but that he had demanded 
rent and services in excess of those provided by the lex 
Hadriana, an imperial regulation. In their petition to the 
emperor they speak of themselves not as free contracting’ 
parties but as “thy native peasants, and foster children of 
thy domains.” * They were not, then, tenants like the 
Italian coloni described in the Digest, but were crown peas- 
ants whose condition was ruled by administrative regulations 
such as the lex Manciana and the lex Hadriana. The lex 
Hadriana was called a perpetua forma and was still in force 
during the reign of Septimius Severus’ three-quarters of a 
century after the time of Hadrian. The coloni of the saltus 
Burumitanus complained bitterly of their mistreatment at the 
hands of the conductor and his allies, the procuratores at 
Carthage, who had sent soldiers to scourge them for their 
temerity in petitioning the emperor; and yet they did not 
leave the domain. The coloni on a neighboring saltus, 
which was mentioned in the mutilated inscription of Gazr- 
Mezuar, did threaten to abandon the saltus unless their 
grievances were redressed, yet such an action seems to have 

1C, I, L., viii, 10570, iii, 28-20. “...rustici tui vernulae et alumni 
saltum tuorum.” 

2 Cf. supra, pp. 140, 181. 


289] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 289 


been looked upon as a last resort. The coloni of the saltus 
Burunitanus spoke of themselves as born on the estate * and 
apparently had no other intention than to continue to live 
there during their whole lives. | 
Besides the long inscriptions which were discussed in 
Chapter V and Chapter VI a large number of brief inscrip- 
tions have been discovered in Africa which add significant 
bits of information in regard to the condition of the tenants 
on the great domains. In the often quoted passage in which 


Frontinus described the huge extent of the African estates 


which individual landlords possessed before the Neronian 
confiscations, he said, “ And these private proprietors have 
on their estates a by no means small plebeian population 
and villages about the villa something like fortifications.”’ * 
The coloni of the African latifundia seem habitually to have 
lived in little village communities called vici or castella. Not 
only are there frequent references to them in inscriptions,* 
but the ruins of these villages are still today to be found in 
Northern Africa.* In fact, as Beaudouin has said,°® the 
provincial African estate with its central villa and the sur- 
rounding peasant villages was in many respects like the 
medieval manor. Like the manor it was largely a self- 
sufficient economic unit. On the estate itself all the essentials 
of community life were to be found. The inscription of 


1C. I. L., viii, 10570, iii, 29, “... vernulae et alumni saltum tuorum.” 

2 Gromatici Veteres, Ed. Lachmann, vol. i, p. 53. “...habent autem 
in saltibus privati non exiguum plebeium et vicos circa villam in modum 
munitionum.” 

$C. I. L., viii, 280. “Aug(ur) vici...” C. I. L., viii, 8280, “. . .vicu(m) 
et nundina(m).” C.J. L., viii, 8777, “...a colonis eius castelli Cellensis.” 
C. I. L., viii, 8701, “... per colonos eiusdem kastelli.” For the complete 
list of references see Schulten, Grundherrschaften, pp. 45 et seq. 

* Cf., Beaudouin, Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr. xxi (1897), pp. 567-568; 
Schulten, op. cit., p. 100. 

5Op. cit., p. 565. 


290 THE ROMAN COLONATE [290 


Gazr-Mezuar speaks of “ shops always available for the pub- 
lic use,’ * which the domain mentioned in that inscription 
possessed. The community had its own baths,’ which must 
have been rather extensive, for in the ruins of some of the 
estates, as they exist today, the remains of the baths are 
more conspicuous than those of the villa itself.* For the 
religious life of the coloni the saltus had its own temple * 
or portico’ with attendant priests ® and augurs.’ The in- 
scription of Henchir Salah speaks of coloni building a temple 
and dedicating it to Ceres, probably the chief deity of the 
wheat province of Africa.* Besides their priests the colomi 
had their own officials. The inscription of Henchir Mettich 
and Souk-el-Khmis were both inscribed by the “ headman ” 
(magister) of the coloni.® The tenants of the Villa Magna 
Variant also possessed a defensor, evidently a man of Car- 
thaginian blood to judge from his name, “ Felix Annobal 
Piradcors 

1C. I. L., viii, 14428, A, 13. “...tabernae quae semper publicis usibus.” 

27C. I. L., viii, 14457. “In his praed(iis) ... (thermas) vetustate con- 
lapsas (coloni restituerunt).” 

5 Cf. Schulten, op. cit., p. 50. 

*C.I. L., viii, 16411. Coloni fun(di...aedem fecerunt) cum columnis 
ornatis.” 

5C. I. L., viii, 11731. “ Porticum sacram a solo co(loni saltus Massi- 
piani fecerunt).” 

‘Cc. I. L., viii,. 291.“ Sacerdos.” C. I. L.;) viii, 580.0) eee 
Cererum.” 

VCoToL. vii) e8os) Aue Car) wich 

8 Année Epigraphique, 1893, No. 66. “...plebs fundi...itani mac- 
eriam dom(us) Cerer(um) s(ua) p(ecunia) f(ecit) idemq(ue) ded- 
(icavit.)” 

® Henchir Mettich, i, 31. ‘“ (Ha)ec lex scripta a Lurio Victore Odilonis 
magistro.” Souk-el-Khmis, iv, 28-29. “Cura agenti C. Julio...ope 
Salupti mag(istro).” Cf. Henchir Salah, “|Plebs fundi...itani... 
mag(istro) P. Statilio Silvano.” 

10 Henchir Mettich, i, 32. ‘‘ Defensore Felici Annobolis Birzilis.” 


291] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 291 


The semi-communal life of the village required of the 
coloni a number of services in addition to the operae which 
they owed the conductores. These services were principally 
connected with building operations. Brick-making is men- 
tioned in the inscription of Gazr-Mezuar.* Several inscrip- 
tions speak of the walls of the village (castellwm) being 
built by the coloni.? Another refers to coloni constructing 
two arches in addition to other buildings by the order of the 
provincial procurator; * and the work of the coloni in build- 
ing temples, porticoes and baths has been mentioned above. 

We have, then, the picture of a small tenantry living in 
their own villages under conditions which made for per- 
manence. They were kept there by no force of law. lia 
colonus abandoned land which he had once undertaken to 
cultivate he was visited with no other punishment than the 
loss of his claim to the land after two years. If the colom 
were oppressed by illegal exactions of the conductor they 
could still threaten to leave, as the inscription of Gazr- 
Mezuar shows. But the ties of custom which held them to 
the lands which their ancestors had cleared and to the villages 
in which they had been brought up were not easy to break. 
And as long as the land yielded them a fairly bountiful re- 
turn it was not likely that they would ever think of deserting 
their homes and starting afresh elsewhere. 

The African inscriptions have proved of great value in 
presenting a clear picture of a type of coloni who differed 
considerably from the short-term tenants described in the 
Digest. But in addition to this, these inscriptions are able 


1A, 8 “...paleam in lateribus ducendis.” 

2C. I. L., viii, 8701. “...muros kastelli Dianensis extruxit per colonos 
iusdem kastelli.” Cf. C.J. L., viii, 8777. 

8C J. L., viii, 587. “ Coloni saltus Massipiani aedificia vetustate con- 
lapse... arcuus duos a s(olo) f(ecerunt) iubente Provinciale Aug(usti) 
lib(erto) pro(curatore.) ” 


292 THE ROMAN COLONATE [292 


to give us some insight into the Roman provincial agricul- 
tural policy of the first and second centuries. The condition 
of the agricultural population of Africa was governed by 
provincial regulations of which we have record of two, the 
lex Manciana, an ordinance either: of the first century or 
earlier, and the lex Hadriana, a regulation of the second 
century. One of the most significant features of these 
ordinances was the fact that they established a fixed rent 
which the coloni were to pay to the conductores or the pro- 
prietors of the estates within their jurisdiction. This may 
not have been an innovation of the Roman administration 
in Africa, for fixed rent may have been habitual in the Car- 
thaginian system of land tenure, just as it was in some of 
the Hellenistic domains. But fixed rent established by per- 
petuae formae was certainly not characteristic of Roman 
land tenure as formulated by the jurists of the Digest. And 
when it was made a part of the domanial regulations of 
Africa by the Roman administrative officials it was a step 
in the direction of permanence of tenure; for as long as the 
rent was not fixed the tenant would hesitate to make im- 
provements on the land for fear that the rent might be raised. 
That such was only too likely to take place can be seen from 
a decision of Scaevola in the Digest. A colonus had set out 
some vines, although his lease had not provided for it, and 
on account of this improvement in his tenancy the landlord 
increased the rent by ten pieces of gold a year. The colonus 
was subsequently evicted because he was unable to pay the 
additional rent and the question arose whether he could lay 
claim to indemnity for the expense he had undergone in 
setting out the vines. Scaevola decided in this case that 
such an indemnity was due him,’ but, nevertheless, it is seen 
that where the rent was not fixed the tenant would seldom 


GT) 4G xiny 2) OR; 


293 | THE ADSCRIPTION) TO THE SOIL 203 


feel that it was worth while for him to make any extensive 
improvements on his farm. But when the rent was fixed 
the opposite situation developed; for then the whole profit 
from the improvements would accrue to the tenant and he 
would make every effort to remain on the same farm and pass 
it on, if possible, to his children.) That the administration 
was very anxious to have the coloni constantly making im- 
provements in the land is seen from the provisions in both 
the lea Manciana and lex Hadriana relative to setting out 
fruit trees and vines and reclaiming waste or uncultivated 
land. 

It is interesting to compare the lex Manciana with the 
lex Hadriana in order to see the increasing pains the admin- 
aes was taking to insure the steady cultivation of the 
land. ‘The lex Manciana had granted exemption from rent 
for ate years’ produce for figs and vines and ior olives that 
were grafted on wild olive trees, while an abatement of ten 
years’ crops was allowed on olive orchards newly set out.” 
The ler Hadriana increased the rent-free period from five 
to seven years for vines and fruit trees, while olives, whether 
planted or grafted, received a ten-year exemption; and the 
important addition was made that after the abatement period 
had ended only those fruits should ey a share as rent which 
were marketed by the cultivators.” y Inducements were made 
in each ordinance for the reclamation of waste land. The 
right of occupying lots of the subcesiva was limited in the 
lex Manciana to coloni who lived on specified domains, and 
after the land had been reclaimed they were required to pay 
the customary share rent to the conductores. Asa reward 
for reclamation they received the right of wsus proprius, a 
privilege the nature of which has puzzled all commentators, 


1 Cf. supra, p. 173. 
2 Cf. supra, p. 182. 
3 Cf. supra, pp. 175, 179-180. 


204 THE ROMAN COLONATE [294 


but perhaps meant, as Gsell suggested, the permission which 
the cultivators received of providing for their own subsis- 
tence before dividing the crop with the conductores.: But 
apparently the reclamation of waste land did not go so 
rapidly as the administration wished, for the ordinance of 
Hadrian opened these lands not simply to the imperial 
coloni but to anyone who wished to cultivate them.” In 
addition abandoned land on the estate which under the ler 
Manciana had reverted to the conductores under the ler 
Hadriana was opened to squatters under the same terms as 
waste land, provided that it had not been cultivated for ten 
years. | Peasants who reclaimed these lands after the period 
of exemption had expired paid share rent to the conductores 
in wine, fruits, and olive oil, but so far as grain was con- 
cerned, the crop, of course, in which the Roman adminis- 
tration was most vitally interested, after paying rent five 
years to the conductores they turned over their shares 
directly to the fiscus, thus becoming direct tenants of the 
crown.* Most important of all, the peasant settlers received 
not merely the right of possession and enjoyment of their 
claims, but the right of transmitting them to their heirs,” 
a development of tremendous significance in the history of 
the tenantry and without doubt the most important step in 
the direction of permanent tenure before the adscription to 
the soil. | | 

The soil of the greater part of Italy was pretty well ex- 
hausted by the end of the Republic; and, although the con- 
servation policy of the more far-sighted emperors of the 


1Cf. supra, p. 175. 

? Ain-el-Djemala, ii, 8-9. “...potestas fit omnibus e(tia)m eas partes 
occupandi...” There is no mention made of coloni in either the inscrip- 
tion of Ain Ouassel or Ain-el-Djemala. 

3 Cf. supra, p. 182. 

* Ain Ouassel, ii, 7-9. “...isque qui occupaverint possidendi ac fru- 
(en) di eredique s(u)o relinquendi id ius datur...” 


“ 


66 


295] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 295 


early Empire was able to check the decline of agriculture to 
some extent, it came too late to accomplish very much. The 
vitality of the Roman empire lay in the provinces which 
annually shipped vast stores of food to the capital. Con- 
sequently it was necessary to insure the maintenance of agri- 
culture in the provinces. Even soils as fertile as those of 
northern Africa could not bear heavy crops year after year 
without showing some signs of declining fertility. And so, 
even in the second century, we read in the lex Hadriana of 
land within the estates being abandoned and of the strenuous 
efforts made to restore them to cultivation, while encourage- 
ments of various sorts were held out as inducements to in- 
crease the arable area; and the grant of hereditary rights 
on the reclaimed land offered the greatest possible induce- 
ments to coloni to keep the land in the best condition possible. 

But it needed the strong hand of a vigilant emperor to 
see that the rights and privileges granted to the imperial 
coloni were observed so that a contented class of small tenant 
farmers would continue to find it to their advantage to keep 
the land in constant cultivation. In a dominion as widely 
extended and composed of as many and as heterogeneous 
elements as that of the Roman Empire a vast army of 
bureaucratic officials was required to oversee the provincial 
land which owed tribute to the fscus. It was an almost 
impossible task to prevent these officials and the great 
capitalist lessees of the imperial domains from increasing 
their demands on the peasantry. In some cases, as Beau- 
douin has maintained,’ the avarice of the conductores may 
have been due to the arrogance which came from their wealth 
and the prestige of their position as direct lessees of the 
emperor. In some cases it may have been due to the ability 
of the strong to take advantage of the weak. But in many 


1 Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xxi (1807), pp. 680-681. 


296 THE ROMAN COLONATE [296 


cases the conductores of the second and third century, like 
the curtales of the fourth, themselves were hard pressed. 
Their canon to the provincial administration had to be paid. 
The constant drain of the grain tribute to Rome, which 
robbed the soil of the precious plant nutrients and did 
nothing to return them, commenced to manifest itself in 
the shape of smaller harvests. Hence the necessity for more 
intensive cultivation and the application of more labor to 
the exploitation of the land, as the increased operae which 
the conductor demanded on the saltus Burumtanus. ‘The 
conductores found themselves in between two millstones, 
the demands of the provincial procuratores and the formae 
perpetuae of their sub-tenants. The requirements of the 
procuratores were inflexible, for they too were middlemen 
and were held responsible by the treasury officials at Rome 
that there should be no diminution in the amount of grain 
shipped to Italy. The procuratores pressed upon the con- 
ductores who found it easier to increase their demands upon 
the coloni than to obtain remission from the procuratores. 
The tributwm was saving Italy from starvation; but it was 
crushing the life out of the provinces. 

A virgin soil is such a storehouse of nitrogen, phosphoric 
acid, potash, and other plant-food constituents that it will 
bear many harvests without any diminution in the crop. 
Yet the time will inevitably come when the fertility of the 
soil will gradually decline unless the essential chemical ele- 
ments are restored to it and the land is kept in good texture 
so that it can avail itself of them. The modern farmer, 
even though he carries away a large crop from his farm 
every year, is careful to see that a part of his gross profits 
are used in returning the necessary plant nutrients to the 
soil and keeping it in good tilth by applying manures and 
fertilizers or by plowing under green manuring crops. But 
sometimes the cultivator is anxious only to make the greatest 


297] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 297 


immediate profit and exploits the land without making any 
return of the plant food which he has taken away. Or some- 
times he must make such heavy payments that nothing is left 
from his gross profits to be reinvested in the soil; nor can he 
afford to let the land rest and regain its fertility by Nature’s 
methods before it becomes so completely worn out that it 
can no longer support sufficient plant life to check erosion. 
In these cases after the soil has lost its virgin fertility it 
rapidly deteriorates until it yields such meager crops that the 
cultivator is tempted to desert it. 

This was the case of the Roman provincial. As long as 
the soil retained its native richness he could pay the tribute. 
The policy of the Roman provincial administration in foster- 
ing long-term and hereditary holdings was a direct incentive 
to the peasant to maintain the fertility of his plot of land. 
Yet the land was losing in fertility even under the best 
cultivation.» The numbers of those in the unproductive 
classes were enormous, and despite the efforts of the em- 
perors to reduce them they continued to be a burden on the 
treasury more and more difficult to support. The area of 
the productive regions of the Empire was constantly dim- 
inishing and the pressure of the land tax fell all the more 
heavily on the regions whose soil had not yet been worn out. 
Greece? and Italy were growing more unproductive every 

1 Of course the ‘Roman knowledge of scientific agriculture cannot be 
compared to that of the present. Yet the familiarity of the Roman 
agricultural writers with methods of restoring fertility to the soil was 
surprising and is certainly superior to any European practice prior 
to the agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century. We have no 
record, except in Egypt, whether or not the teachings of the agricultural 
writers were ever actually applied; yet the administrators of the im- 
perial domains must have been acquainted with them. Cf. Simkhovitch, 
Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxi (1916), pp. 220-221. 

2 On the decline of fertility in Greece see Guiraud, La propriété fonciére 
en Gréce (Paris, 1893), pp. 548 et seqg.; Justus von Liebig, Die Chemic 
in threr Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, 7th Ed. (Bruns- 
wick, 1862), p. 96. 


298 THE ROMAN COLONATE [298 


generation, while to Salvian, writing in the fifth century, 
the fertile grain provinces of Spain and Africa, whose wheat 
had once yielded a hundred-fold and more,’ as well as the 
recently exploited province of Gaul, appeared utterly ruined.’ 
“All the land between the stormy Black Sea and the Adriatic 
(i. e., Thrace, Moesia, and Illyria) lies waste, without cattle 
and cultivated by no coloni,” said Claudian, “ just like burn- 
ing Libya, which, always parched by the sun, is never 
brought under cultivation.” ° 

One country alone seemed for a long time unaffected by 
the heavy tribute and its disastrous effects on the productiv- 
ity of the soil. This was Egypt where the annual overflow 
of the Nile constantly renewed the fertility of its fields. 
While the population of the Empire was steadily declining 
the population of Egypt maintained itself and even increased 
a little.* While the other provinces found it increasingly 
difficult to furnish their requisitions of grain to the capital, 
Egypt continued to supply Rome and other cities annually 
with millions of modu of grain. There was no danger of 
exhausting the fertility of the Nile valley; for the overflow 
of the Nile deposited silt which it had collected on its long 


1Phin., N. H., xviii, 21. 

? Salvianus, De Gubernat. Dei., iv, 4.“ Denique sciunt hoc Hispaniae, 
quibus nomen relictum est, sciunt Africae, quae fuerunt, sciunt Galliae 
devastatae...” Cf. Simkhovitch, op. cit., p. 231. Guiraud (op. cit., p. 
548) judges from modern chemical analyses of African soil that it was 
the unreplaced loss of phosphoric acid which caused the land of Roman 
Africa to lose its fertility. 

* Claudianus, In Rufinum (395-404 A. D.), ii, 38-42. 
“Omnis quae mobile Ponti 
Aequor, et Hadriacas tellus interjacet undas, 
Squalet inops pecudum, nullis habitata colonis, 
Instar anhelantis Libyae, quae torrida semper 
Solibus humano nescit mansuescere cultu.” 

4 Cf. Simkhovitch, op. cit., pp. 232-233; Seeck, Geschichte des Unter- 

gangs der antiken Welt, vol. i, p. 347. 


299] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 299 


—_ 


journey from Abyssinia, so that the Nile-valley peasant 
cultivated soil which was perennially virgin. Hence the 
enormous importance of Egypt in the economic life of the 
Roman Empire. After Julius Caesar had conquered Egypt 
he did not make it a province for fear that an ambitious 
governor might establish himself there and make it the seat 
of revolt.” Augustus made it a province,’ but largely on 
account of its importance in the production of grain he re- 
tained the administration in his own hands.* “In view of 
the populousness of both cities and country,” said Cassius 
Dio, “. . . and the importance of grain supplies and revenue, 
so far from daring to entrust the land to any senator, he 
(Augustus) would not even grant one permission to live 
init.” * The prefects were appointed not from the powerful 
senatorial families, but from the equites ° who could be kept 
more thoroughly under the imperial control. In the next 
reign the jealous anger of Tiberius was aroused because 
Germanicus had entered Egypt without his permission.* 
This was regarded by the emperor almost as treason, for a 
general controling Alexandria had it in his power to reduce 
Italy to famine by preventing the shipments of Egyptian 
grain." 

Egypt had for centuries before the Roman conquest been 


1 Suet., Jul., 35. 

2 Suet., Aug., 18. 

3 Tac., Hist., i, 11, “Ita visum expedire provinciam...annonae fecun- 
dam...ignaram magistratuum domi retinere.” 

* Cassius Dio, 51,17. Trans. by Foster. 

tac. Hist. 1, 11. 

6 Tac., Ann., li, 59. 

™Tac., loc. cit., “Nam Augustus... seposuit Aegyptum, ne fame 
urgueret Italiam, quisquis eam provinciam...insedisset.” Ferrero even 
argued that the infatuation of Anthony for Cleopatra was a myth, and 
that the real purpose of the triumvir was to establish a world empire 
with Egypt rather than Italy as its nucleus. Cf. The Greatness and 
Decline of Rome (New York, 1908), vol. iv, pp. 261-277. 


300 THE ROMAN COLONATE [300 


an exporting country and her monarchs had amassed vast 
treasures from her favorable balance of trade. They were 
not satisfied simply with the produce of the flooded regions 
but attempted to extend the productive areas of land as far 
as possible. There were three “ productive categories’ of 
land in Egypt, the flooded land (BeBpeypevn), the land which 
was unflooded but which was capable of irrigation (dBpoxos), 
and the dry land (xépc0s).' Both encouragement and force 
were employed by the Ptolemies to bring the less valuable 
categories of land under cultivation. “Dry farms” (9 
xépcos) were granted to veterans on very favorable terms, 
while the taxes which they were required to pay were lower 
than elsewhere; and although the land legally reverted to 
the crown at the death of the veteran, it became customary 
to continue the grant of land to his eldest son.” Similar 
favorable leases were granted to cultivators who set out 
vines and fruit trees and who attempted to reclaim aban- 
doned or waste land; * and where emphyteutic leases were 
not sufficient to induce the cultivation of the unflooded land, 
peasants were arbitrarily settled there,* while the head ten- 
ants either of the royal domain (yj Pacwrsuxy) or of the 
granted land (y7 év ddéca) were forced to add portions of 
the less valuable land to their leaseholds.° 

The Ptolemaic system of maintaining the cultivation of 
the unflooded land was appropriated by the Romans and 
extended as far as possible. The irrigation system was 
given a thorough overhauling by Augustus,® the silt de- 

1 Westermann, Class. Philol., xv (1920), p. 123. 

* For references to papyri see Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 7-11. 

° Cf. ibid., pp. 14-17, 30-31, 38, 40-41. 

* Cf. ibid., pp. 53-55. 

5 Cf. ibid., pp. 57-58. 

© Suet., Aug., 18. Cf. Westermann, “ Aelius Gallus and the Reorganiza- 


tion of the Irrigation System of Egypt under Augustus,” Class. Philol., 
xii (1917), PP. 237-243. | 





301] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 301 


“posits were cleaned out and no doubt distributed on poor 
‘land, as is done today in China." The system of emphy- 
_teutic sales and leases was considerably extended, greater 
abatements in rents and taxes were given, and the obliga- 

tion of continuous cultivation was more carefully enforced ; ” 

and émZoA) was applied not only to the lessee of state land 
but the private landholder as .well.* The unflooded land 
capable of irrigation (éBpoyos yf) was charged with higher 
_rents and taxes than the more valuable flooded land—an 
ingenious device to enforce cultivation not unlike the taxa- 
tion of unimproved lands advocated by the Single Taxers. 
But where this land was artificially irrigated (érnvrAnpevy y7) 
by ditching from the canals or basins, or by the use of 
water-wheels, bucket-chains, or the ancient native device of 
a water-lift (shaduf), an abatement of one-half the rent 
was allowed.* 

There was one significant change brought about by the 
Roman conquest which in due time resulted in important 
consequences. The Ptolemies, though foreigners, had al- 
ways regarded themselves as national rulers and their policy 
aimed to further what they conceived to be the true interest 
of Egypt itself. The Roman emperors, on the other hand, 
ordinarily regarded Egypt as a mere province whose sole 
function was to supply the rest of the Empire with food 
products; ° and in an age before artificial refrigeration and 
rapid transportation this meant grain par excellence. The 


1 According to Strabo the increased utilitization of the waters of the 
Nile proved of considerable benefit to Egyptian agriculture. Strabo, 
XVil, 1; 3. 

2 Cf. supra, p. 213. 

3 Cf. Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 200-201. 

4For a discussion of the texts see Westermann, Class. Philol., xvi 
(1921), pp. 169-177, 184-188. 

5 Rostowzew, Op. cit., p. 207. 

6 Cf. Westermann, Class. Philol., xv (1920), p. 120. 


302 THE ROMAN COLONATE [302 


Egyptians might find it more profitable to produce market 
garden products, yet the Romans compelled them to culti- 
vate grain;* and as the yield of the grain tribute com- 
menced to decline in other provinces the Roman adminis- 
tration pressed so much harder on Egypt. No amount of 
intensive cultivation could injure the flooded land, but after 
a century or two of Roman methods of exploitation the 
unflooded land commenced to show the strain. Beginning 
with the second century, the tenants in Egypt seem to have 
been as frequently in arrears as those in other parts of the 
Empire.” Desertion of the land increased and it became 
necessary to enforce the old tax principle of ida with in- 
creasing severity to keep the yewpyot in their native districts. 
Under the Ptolemies when the peasants had been unable to 
pay their rents and taxes, they had found some relief by 
organizing a strike and marching away to a temple where 
they could remain until the government reduced their pay- 
ments. But the Romans took away the right of sanctuary, 
while the attempt to strike was severely punished.* Yet 
flight was common, as the peasant often preferred the pre- 
carious life of a fugitive highwayman to performing thank- 
less toil for the Roman tax-gatherers.* 

Most of the references to é:Bod» and forced leases of the 
gleba inutilis come in the second century and later.° It 
was growing more and more difficult to keep the land not 
directly watered by the Nile under cultivation. The decline 
in the semi-arid districts seems to have set in about in the 


1 Plin., Ny xix, 20. 

2 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 140-141; cf. supra, p. 269. 
* Rostowzew, op. cit., pp. 200, 217. 

‘ Tbid., p. 206. 


5 Cf. De Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum, p. 70; Rostowzew, Studien, 
p. 200. 


303] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 303 


middle of the second century,’ and continued with steadily 
increasing force during the third and fourth centuries.* 
The irrigation system, which had been renovated by Augus- 
tus, once more fell in a bad state of disrepair and some of 
the low land became too marshy for cultivation. The Em- 
peror Probus in the third century by draining the swamps 
and improving the irrigation system was able to restore 
some land of cultivation.* But the effect of his activity was 
only temporary and the desert and the swamp once more 
encroached on the arable land. A new category of land was 
now mentioned in the papyri, called “entirely unproduc- 
tive land” (dzopov).* In the fourth century towns like 
Philadelphia, Bacchias, and Euhmeria, which had been 
prosperous as long as the irrigation had been kept up, 
were swallowed up by the desert, never to be reclaimed; 
while towns such as Karanis and Tebtunis, which formerly 
had been teeming agricultural centers, became mere strag- 
gling villages on the new frontier of the desert.” And 
finally, by the beginning of the fifth century, the forced 
occupation of deserted villages became a regular feature 
of the Roman agrarian administration of Egypt.° 


1De Zulueta, op. cit., p. 66. Rostovtzeff, Wisc. Stud. in Soc. Sci., vi 
(1922), p. 13. 

2 Rostovtzeff, op. cit., p. 14; Westermann, Class. Philol., xiv (1919), p. 
164; Grenfell, Hunt, and Hogarth, Fayum Towns and their Papyvri, 
pp. 16, 45. 

3 Vopiscus, Probi Vita, 9. 

4 Rostovtzeff cites P. Gen., 66, 67, 69, 70. Cf. Univ. of Wis. Stud. in 
Soc. Sci., vi (1922), p. 14. 

5 Cf. Grenfell, Hunt, and Hogarth, op. cit., pp. 16, 45; Rostovtzeff, 
Op. cti., p. 14. 

6 Cod. Theod., xi, 24, 6. (415 A.D.) “Ii sane, qui vicis quibus 
adscribti sunt derelictis...ad sedem desolait ruris constrictis detenta- 
toribus redire cogantur...et in earum metrocomiarum locum, quas 
temporis labsus vel destituit vel virtbus vacuavit, ex florentibus aliae 
subrogentur.” 


304 THE ROMAN COLONATE [304 


The great economic problem of the late Empire was the 
desertion of the fields. It was the same problem which had 
confronted Italy at the close of the Republic and had caused 
such alarm to statesmen who felt that Italy should be self- 
supporting. But Italy had saved herself by importing food 
products from her subject provinces and Rome waxed 
greater than ever on the contributions of conquered races 
to her treasury. As long as the bountiful harvests of the 
fertile districts in the provinces furnished an ample supply 
of grain to the regions of the Empire which could not sup- 
port themselves there was little general anxiety as to the 
future of the Empire. But by the third century the declin- 
ing productivity of the soil, which had already made Greece 
and Italy economically dependent, commenced to make itself 
felt in the provinces; and desertion of the fields instead of 
being a vexatious local problem became a world problem upon 
whose solution the very existence of the Empire depended. 
Plans of all sorts were tried by the emperors to check the 
evil, which was a far greater menace to the Empire than 
any external foe; and out of these heterogeneous measures 
taken by the administration there evolved the three most 
significant agrarian institutions of the late Empire, emphy- 
teusis, ér.Body, and the colonate. 

Whether the lex Hadriana, which gave squatters heredi- 
tary rights over waste and deserted lands which they occu- 
pied, was a general law valid for the whole Empire* or 
merely a regulation pertaining to the African domains, it 
is impossible to determine from the authorities at present at 
our disposal. The first general law concerning the agri 
desertt of which we have record was an edict of Pertinax 
of 193 A. D. According to this edict Pertinax offered 


1 As Carton (Rev. archéol., xxi, 1893, pp. 28, 38-39), Carcopino (Kiio, 
viii, 1908, p. 179), Weber (Die rémische Agrargeschichte, p. 257), and 
Ramsay (The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, p. 284) believed. 


305] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 305 


waste land or abandoned farms in Italy or the provinces in 
perpetual ownership to anyone who would undertake to re- 
claim them; and as a reward for the expense of clearing the 
fields the cultivators were granted an exemption from the 
land tax for a period of ten years." Later, attempts were 
made to induce veterans to settle on uncultivated lands 
(terrae vacantes) under the most favorable conditions. 
Not only were they offered perpetual immunity from rent 
to make the grant of land attractive but they were given 
cattle, seed, and money to defray their initial expenses.” 
In addition it was decreed that in case veterans wished to 
lay claim to any land which was not being worked by its 
owners they might do so, while the proprietor of the land 
was forbidden to hinder them in any way or to demand a 
share of the crops of the farm.* Finally the same right was 
given to any squatter, by a rescript of Valentinian II, Theo- 
dosius I, and Arcadius, giving the proprietor in this case, 
however, two years of grace to lay claim to the land. If 
the proprietor did reclaim his property within the prescribed 
time he was ordered to pay the squatter full compensation 
for his outlays; but if he made no effort to regain his prop- 
erty within two years, full ownership passed to the man 
who had occupied the land.* 

On the imperial domains the increasing difficulty of keep- 
ing the fields in cultivation brought about an important 
change in the form of lease. In the early Empire the do- 
mains were ordinarily leased to capitalist lessees (conduc- 


1 Herodian, ii, 4, 12(6). 

2 Cod. Theod., vii, 20, 3 and 8. These land grants to veterans were 
purely agricultural in character and are to be distinguished from the 
assignments of land on the border (agri limitanei or fundi limitrophi) 
which were granted to soldiers in return for military service. Cf. Gar- 
sonnet, Locations perpétuelles, pp. 152, 164-166. 

5 Cod. Theod., vii, 20, II. 

4 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 8; Cod. Theod., v, 11, 12. 


306 THE ROMAN COLONATE [306 


tores) under the terms of the regular five-year contract of 
locatio-conductio.* At first the returns from the domains 
were sufficiently profitable for the administration to obtain 
conductores without difficulty and releasing fertile domains 
was no doubt as common elsewhere as on the saltus Bur- 
unitanus.” But even as early as the time of Hadrian, we 
read of the difficulty of finding conductores and of retaining 
them on some of the imperial domains after expiration of 
their leases.° And in the late Empire there was so little 
profit to be obtained from leasing the imperial domains that 
the fiscus could ordinarily obtain lessees only by means of 
perpetual grants which gave the grantee most of the rights 
of ownership, while the short-term lease almost wholly dis- 
appeared.* 

There were three forms of perpetual leases which were 
utilized in the late Empire. The jus perpetuwm or perpetu- 
arium, a simple perpetual and hereditary lease, was probably 
the most common of the perpetual leases at first, but later 
was merged into the emphyteutic lease.” When capitalist 
lessees could not be obtained under the jus perpetuum it was 
frequently found advantageous to grant the land under the 
terms of the jus privatum salvo canone. ‘This was legally 
a sale rather than a lease, giving the purchaser the rights of 
a proprietor over the estate, such as the right to free the 
slaves of the domain,° a privilege which was forbidden to 

1 Beaudouin, “ Les grands domaines dans l’empire romain,” Nouv. rev. 
hist. de droit fr., xxii (1808), pp. 312-315. The conductor Allius Maximus 
of the saltus Burunitanus held such a lease. Cf. C. I. L., viii, 10570, iti, 
22-23. 

7C, I..L., vill, 10570, loc. cét. 

* Dig., xlix, 14, 3, 6. “‘ Divus etiam Hadrianus in haec verba rescripsit > 


‘Valde inhumanus mos est iste, quo retinentur conductores... pub- 
licorum agrorum, si tantidem locari non possint.’ ” 


* Cf., Beaudouin, op. cit., p. 340; Garsonnet, op. cit., p. 148. 
° For texts see Beaudouin, op. cit., pp. 150-151. 
® Cod. Just., xi, 62, 12. 


307 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO ae SOIL 307 


the perpetuarius conductor.* However, as the grantee under 
the jus privatum salvo canone still had to pay a small rent 
to the fiscus in addition to his taxes, the contract was actually 
a perpetual lease of a very favorable character.” But by far 
the most common and important form of lease of the im- 
perial domains was the emphyteutic lease (jus emphyteu- 
ticum). Applied first to abandoned domains of the em- 
peror, in the course of time it absorbed the jus perpetuum 
and came to be used very frequently as a means of main- 
taining the cultivation of private estates,* as well as those 
of the emperor. 

The essential characteristic of emphyteusis, the feature 
which distinguished it from the other forms of perpetual 
and hereditary leases of the late Empire, was the obligation 
assumed by the lessee of improving the land and keeping it 
in constant cultivation* (éu@urevev = to plant in). On as- 
suming possession of the uncultivated land the emphyteuta 
was given complete exemption from rent for three years, 
while if the land was of mediocre quality, although not de- 
serted, he was freed from rent for two years.° After the 
expiration of the years of exemption a very moderate canon 
was to be paid.®. The most favorable feature of the emphy- 
teutic lease was the fact that the leasehold could not be 

burdened with higher rents or taxes in subsequent years. 
“For it is absurd,” said a rescript of Theodosius II and 
Valentinian III, “‘ that those who at our request have un- 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 63, 2. 

2 Cf., Beaudouin, op. cit., pp. 347, 576; Garsonnet, op. cit., pp. 149-150. 

8 Beaudouin, op. cit., p. 546, 572. 

AGoarsusi., tv, 66, 2,and 3.'' Nov., 7,3; 2; 120, & Cf, Mitteis; “ Zur 


Geschichte der Erbpacht in Altertum,” Abhandl. der philol.-histor. Cl. 
d. kénigl. sichsisch. Gesell. d. Wiss., xx, p. 64. 


5 Cod. Theod., v, 14, 30; Cod. Just., xi, 50, 7. 
6 Cod. Just., xi, 65, 4; Cod. Theod., v, 15, 20. 


308 THE ROMAN COLONATE [308 


dertaken to improve poor and unproductive soil at great 
labor and expense and possibly to the great detriment of 
their own family fortunes, should be deceived (by our 
promises) and forced to bear an unexpected burden .. . 
which, if they had foreseen it, would have caused them to 
be unwilling to enter upon the lease or even to cultivate the 
land.” * However, if the land was allowed to deteriorate 
or if the rent was not paid for three years in case of crown 
lands or two years in case of church property the estate 
reverted to the lessor.” 

The emphyteutic lease was by no means a new creation 
of the late Empire. It had been, under other names, indeed, 
frequently practiced in the past in Greece,* Egypt * and no 
doubt in other lands where the Hellenic influence was 
strong. But it had never been seized upon by any nation 
and applied with such desperate thoroughness as by the 
Roman administration in the late Empire, until it well-nigh 
supplanted all other forms of agricultural tenure. Yet, ad- 
vantageous as the benefits of the emphyteutic leases were 
to the conductores and stringent as their obligations were in 
maintaining the constant cultivation of the land, the fields 
continued to be deserted. In 365 A. D. we read of the em- 
phyteutic conductores complaining of desertion of their 
fields and asking for remission of their canon.° In 395 
A. D. it was stated that there were 528,042 jugera of agri 


ce 


1 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 17. “...quoniam nimis absurdum est eos qui nobis 
hortantibus fundos inopes atque egenos magno labore impenso aut ex- 
hausto patrimonio vix forte meliorare potuerint, utpote deceptos ino- 
pinatum onus suscipere, .. quod si se daturos praescissent, fundos minime 
suscipere aut etiam colere paterentur.” 

* Cody Justi, 1, 00,42, 2} NOV 7s By 2s 

>For the Greek leases, éc¢ rdv aravra ypévov, aevvduc, tig marpiKd, etc. 
which were essentially the same as Roman emphyteusis, see Guiraud, La 
propriété fonciere en Gréce. pp. 426 et seq. 

4 Cf. supra, pp. 211, 213. 

5 Cod. Just., xi, 62, 3. 


309 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 309 


desertt in Campania alone.’ The beneficial features of the 
emphyteutic legislation were not sufficient to keep the land 
in cultivation. It was necessary to apply force as well. 
The many attempts which the Romans made to compel 
the northern barbarians to cultivate waste and abandoned 
land within the Empire we have already discussed in detail. 
“On account of the scarcity of grain,’ says the Constitutio 
de Scyris, the most famous of the documents on the bar- 
barian settlements, “it will be permitted to keep them (the 
barbarians) in the transmarine provinces and to attach them 
to estates forever.” * On lands where the native peasant 
class had failed to make a living not much could be expected 
from untutored and restless barbarians; and it was only on 
the exhausted lands of the border that these semi-military, 
semi-agricultural settlements of barbarians showed any signs 
of permanence. Yet the repeated attempts of the Roman 
administration to locate barbarians forcibly on agri deserts 
within the Empire shows that it was neglecting no means, 
however unpromising, of keeping the land in cultivation. 
Far more important was the so-called émBody* legislation, 
the most astonishing and arbitrary agrarian legislation in 
the world’s history. The first law of which we have record 
was an edict of Aurelian (270-275 A. D.) which assigned 
all deserted lands within the territory of a municipality to 
the city senators, and, after an immunity of three years, 
made them responsible for the land tax from these estates.” 


1 Cod. Theod., xi, 28, 2. 

2 Cf. supra, pp. 74-91. 

8 Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4), 3. “‘Licet... pro ret frumen(tari)ae angustiis 
in provinciis transmarinis...eos retinere et postea in sedes perpetuas 
(conl)ocare.” Cf. supra, pp. 34-35. 

4 The forcible addition of exhausted land to productive land. It was 
also called junctio, permixtio, and adjectio. 

5 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 1. 


210 THE ROMAN COLONATE [310 


This proved to be a burden so heavy that many of the 
cuniales were unable to bear it and Constantine, a half- 
century later, was forced to transfer the obligation of the 
ruined curiales to the landholders of the district.1 A second 
law was drawn up under Constantine in 337. In this the 
purchaser of an estate was forbidden to buy merely the 
fertile land of the estate but was required to include in his 
purchase the unproductive parts as well.* Similarly in 371, 
Valentinian I, Valens, and Gratian ruled that the heirs of 
an estate must accept the bad land as well as the good, and 
be accountable for the taxes of both, or else renounce all 
claim to the whole estate. A few years later Valens, Gra- 
tian and Valentinian II decreed that conductores of fertile 
tracts of municipal land must take over unfruitful fields in 
addition or they would be required to surrender their leases,* 
while, in 383, Theodosius the Great applied the same regu- 
lation to lessees of the imperial domains and of the confis- 
cated land of the pagan temples.® Finally, in 386, the most 
drastic of all the é.Bod}) laws was enacted. This was an- 
other edict of Theodosius which provided that a conductor 
was not only responsible for the cultivation of barren tracts 
of land in the immediate vicinity of his estate, but that he 


1Tbid., “...praecipimus, ut, si constiterit ad suscipiendas easdem pos- 
sessiones ordines minus idoneos esse, eorundem agrorum onera posses- 


sionibus et territoriis dividantur.” Monnier believes that this division — 


of the tax “ among the possessions and territories” meant a pro rata dis- 
tribution of the land tax on these estates to the tax-payers of the district. 
Cf. Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xvi (1802), p. 331. 


2 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 2; Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 4. The law was re-enacted 
by Arcadius and Honorius in 308. Cod. Just., xi, 59, 10; Cod Theod., 
Sil, 13,0; 

3 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 4; Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 17. 

* Cod. Just., xi, 50, 5. 


5 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 6; Cod. Theod., xi, 3, 4. 





| 


| 


SUT | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL mali 


might be compelled to cultivate and pay taxes on abandoned 
fields located at a distance.* 

However, arbitrary and harsh as these measures were, 
they were closely linked with the emphyteutic legislation. 
In case a conductor could show that he was improving his 
leasehold, the emperors Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theo- 
dosius I decreed that he could not be, forced to undertake 
the cultivation of more than one abandoned tract of land.” 
While Theodosius II declared that conductores who under- 
took the reclamation of abandoned land would be free from 
the imposition of émBodry (adjectio) forever.® 

It is only in connection with the contemporaneous emphy- 
teutic and émPody legislation that the adscription of the 
coloni to the soil can be understood in proper perspective. 
The same cause which induced the wealthy landholders 
to abandon the cultivation of much of their lands operated 
with equal force upon the humble tenants and led them to 
desert their holdings. A vast area of land had simply ceased 
to yield a remunerative return and neither landlord nor 
tenant wished to keep up the gratuitous struggle. ‘“ My 
farm is in bad condition,’ wrote Symmachus in the fourth 
century, “and a large part of the returns is in arrears, while 
the coloni have no means either to pay their accounts or to 
keep up cultivation.”* “ The property which has fallen to 
me must be inspected,’ he wrote in another letter, “ not 
that I have any hopes of making it profitable but in order 

1 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 7, 2. “...ut primum vicinas et in eodem territorio 


sortiatur, dehine si neque finitimas neque in isdem locis reppererit con- 
stitutas, tunc demum etiam longius positas...suscipiat.” 


Cod. Just., Xi, 71,2 
3 Nov. Theod. II, xxvi, 1, 4. “...nullamque eos descriptionem aut 
adjectionem aut innovationem in posterum sustinere.” 


4 Symmachus, Epist., vi, 81. “Neque ager cultura nitet et fructuum 
pars magna debetur, nihilque iam colonis superest facultatum, quod aut 
rationi opituletur aut cultui.” 


312 THE ROMAN COLONATE [312 


to keep up the farm by further expenditures. For it has 
come to be the custom in our age that the land which once 
fed us now itself must be fed.’* In consequence of the 
unremunerative character of agriculture in many districts 
the proprietors of the land and the great capitalist lessees 
of the imperial domains were either offered extraordinary 
inducements to keep poor land under cultivation or else they 
were forcibly presented with tracts of barren land and held 
accountable for the taxes; while the coloni were attached 
in perpetuity to the estates which in many cases they were 
trying to desert. 

The legal attachment of the coloni to the soil was an en- 
actment which applied as much to the proprietors of the 
estate as to the tenants. Under no circumstances were land- 
lords allowed to sell, bequeath, or even give away land with- 
out the coloni. “If they (the proprietors) think that the 
coloni are of use,” said Constantius in a rescript of 357, 
“either they ought to retain them on their own estates, or, 
if they despair of making their land profitable, they should 
relinquish them to the men to whom they have surrendered 
their estates.” * f The coloni are “‘the slaves of the land 
itself on which they were born”. They cannot be sep- 
arated from their fields, said Justinian, “for it is sufficiently 
inhuman to deprive the land of its members ne Not only 
the proprietors but the Treasury itself was not allowed to 


1 Symmachus, op. cit., i, 5. “ Sed res familiaris inclinata a nobis usque 
quaque visenda est, non ut quaestuum summa ditescat, sed ut spes agri 
voluntariis dispendiis fulciatur. Namque hic usus in nostram venit 
aetatem, ut rus, quod solebat alere, nunc alatur.” 


2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 2. “Qui enim colonos utiles credunt, aut cum 
praediis eos tenere debent aut profuturos aliis derelinquere, si ipsi sibi 
praedium prodesse desperant.” 

> Cod. Just., xi, 52,1. “...servi tamen terrae ipsius, cui nati sunt.” 


4 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23, pr. “Cum satis inhumanum est terram... suis 
membris defraudari.” . 


313] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 313 


break the bonds which attached the coloni to the soil. ‘“The 
coloni must never be disturbed in their tenure by the tax- 
collectors by reason of any arrears in taxes,’”’ ordered Hono- 
rius and Theodosius II, “ because they are so closely bound 
to the soil that they may not be detached even for a single 
moment” * Nor was the Treasury allowed to levy addi- 
tional taxes against the peasants while they were engaged in 
planting or harvesting the crops; ‘“ for,” said Constantine, 
“the occasion favorable to finishing this important work 
must not be permitted to be lost.” * 

At about the same time that free tenants were bound to 
the soil, laws were passed depriving landholders of the right 
to sell agricultural slaves from the land or to sell the land 
without the slaves who had been accustomed to work it.® 
This was utterly contrary to the old Roman law of slavery 
which gave the master almost complete control over his 
slaves. But in the face of the great menace of ever- 
increasing stretches of barren and deserted land old rights 
and privileges had to go by the board. ‘Everyone is forced 
by the pressure of inexorable laws to submit his own for- 
tune that the public interest may not suffer,” said Theodo- 
sius II in a rescript of 440.* The land must be cultivated 
for sufficient food products must be raised to feed the 
population of the Empire and to support the army and the 
official bureaucracy, whose maintenance was necessary to 
prevent the breaking of the bonds which held the Empire 
together. 

1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 15. “‘Colonos numquam fiscalium nomine debitorum 


ullius exactoris pulset intentio: quos ita glebis inhaerere praecipimus, ut 
ne puncto quidem temporis debeant amoveri.” 

2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 1. “...cum providentiae sit opportuno tempore his 
necessitatibus satisfacere.” 

3 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 7; xii, 35, I0. 

4Cod. Just., x, 71, 4. “...pro definitione legum inexorabilium suam 
fortunam subire compelli, quatenus nec publicis quicquam noceatur.” 


314 THE ROMAN COLONATE [314 


The legal attachment of the coloni to the soil brought 
with it considerable advantages both in respect to the ad- 
ministration of recruiting and of taxation. In fact many 
writers have maintained that these advantages were suffi- 
cient in themselves to account for the colonate legislation. 
Where the coloni were bound to the soil it was much easier 
to allocate justly the number of recruits to be drafted from 
each district than in the case of a roving peasant class. 
Similarly, the poll tax (capitatio humana) could be col- 
lected with much greater ease where the residence of the 
colonus was fixed and unchangeable; and since the propri- 
etor of an estate was made responsible for the poll tax of 
his tenants it would have been extremely difficult to admin- 
ister the tax if the coloni had been allowed to desert their 
holdings in large numbers." Even more advantageous was 
adscription of the coloni in the case of the land tax (jugatio 
terrena). ‘The evaluation of the land upon which the land 
tax was based was made probably every five years.* During 
the five-year periods the cadastre remained practically uni- 
form, although in case of some disaster such as an earth- 
quake or drought deductions were allowed,® while an in- 
crease in the value of the estate through birth of slaves or 
live stock within the assessment period also was to be de- 
clared.* The decuriones were responsible for the land tax 
within their districts, and in case it fell short of the as- 
sessed amount they were compelled to make up the deficit 
from their own private resources. Consequently, the suc- 


1 Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches, pp. 80-86, 89-91. 

2 Cf. Seeck, in Deutsche-Z. f. Geschichtswissensch., vol. xii (1894), pp. 
279 et seq., and in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., vol. iv, p. 497. The 
older belief was in a fifteen-year census period. Cf. Savigny, V ermischte 
Schriften, vol. ii, pp. 126-134; Humbert, Essai sur les finances chez les 
Romains, vol. ii, pp. 348-340. 

Pe Beye PANN) CAP i 

* Dig. L, 18, 4, 9. 


315] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 315 


cessful administration of the tax depended upon the main- 
tenance of agriculture in each district. Desertion of the 
land by the coloni on a large scale or the abandonment of 
cultivation by proprietors would have resulted in serious 
loss if not ruin to the decuriones, and probably the break- 
down of the whole system of delegated responsibility for 
taxation. The passage of the laws binding the coloni for- 
ever to their estates and forcing the large landholders to 
keep barren tracts of land in cultivation enabled this rigid 
system of tax administration to subsist a while longer, even 
though it did occasionally crush the decuriones in regions 
where the whole force of the administration was not able 
to keep the land in cultivation. 

But these advantages of the adscription of the coloni and 
of the émPodr}) legislation were merely incidental. Deser- 
tion of the fields meant far more to the Empire than an 
embarrassment to a rather clumsy and inflexible system of 
tax administration. It meant that the source itself of the 
principal tax of the realm was wasting away, so that unless 
it were arrested, no tax administration, however efficient, 
could obtain sufficient revenue to maintain the imperial 
government. Still more important, it meant that the sur- 
plus of agricultural products above the mere necessities of 
subsistence of the peasants would soon be so small that it 
could not support a metropolitan or imperial economy. 

All civilization depends upon the surplus of product over 
cost. From the time of the early Republic Rome had de- 
veloped a military and administrative organization which 
had proved supremely successful in the work of conquest 
and exploitation of the conquered land. But as Rome ex- 
tended her dominion it was necessary continually to increase 
the size of the military and administrative organization 
which gathered in the fruits of victory, while the success of 
the legions provided untold wealth and luxury for the great, 


316 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY [316 


and bread and circuses for the rabble. The result was that 
although the surplus furnished by the productive classes of 
the Empire was very considerable the requirements of the 
administration and of the parasitic classes were so great 
that the productive capacity of the Empire was always taxed 
to the limit. 

The time eventually came when the returns from agri- 
culture, the most vital form of production, began to de- 
cline. The soil which had responded so long with bountiful 
harvests began to show the results of the heavy tribute 
which did not permit the conservation of the elements of 
fertility, As long as the decline of the productivity of the 
soil was merely local it could be met by securing a part of 
the surplus from other districts. But by the fourth century 
the decadence of agriculture had become so widespread that 
it threatened the great imperial economy itself which Rome 
had constructed. To arrest this decline, to induce the cul- 
tivation of the fields by encouragement or by force, to pre- 
vent the exhausted soil from turning into a barren desert 
or a malarial marsh was the essential object of the emphy- 
teutic and émBody legislation; and it was precisely the same | 
cause which led to the adscription of the tenantry to the soil 
in the perpetual bonds of the colonate. At approximately 
the same time, as writers from the time of Carl Hegel have 
pointed out,’ the industrial classes were similarly bound to 
their collegia. The decline in the yield of the land tax had 
compelled the government to recoup itself by levying heavier 
taxes on industry. The attempt of the industrial classes to 
escape their new obligations led the administration to take 
the same restrictive measures against them that it had 
against the peasantry.” The exhaustion of the soil in so 


1 Cf. supra, pp. 53-54, 55, 96, 102, 110, 132, 136, 183. 
*Cf. Brown “ State Control of Industry in the Fourth Century,” Pol. 


317 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 217 


many districts of the Empire was proving a fatal malady 
which affected the whole body politic. The legislation of 
the Codes was so drastic because a desperate situation was 
to be met; and this legislation was effective in keeping an 
agricultural population and somehow maintaining agricul- 
tural production. 


Sct. Quart., vol. ii (1887), pp. 497, 500-502. For the complete list of 
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Mitteis, L., dus den griechischen Papyrusurkunden (Leipzig, 1900), 
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Mommsen, Theodor, “ Decret des Commodus fiir den Saltus Burunitanus,” 
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Oliver, E. H., Roman Economic Conditions to the Close of the Republic 
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Pelham, H. F., “The Imperial Domains and the Colonate,” and 
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Pernot, Maurice, “L’Inscription d’Henchir Mettich,” in Mélanges 
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Puchta, G. F., Cursus der Institutionen, 1oth ed. (Leipzig, 1893), vol. ii, 
PP. 97-99. 

Ramsay, W. M., The Historical Geography of Asia Minor (London, 
1890), pp. 23-26, 173-176. 

The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (Oxford, 1895), vol. i, 
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Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Provinces of the 
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Rérolle, Lucién, Le colonage partiaire (Lyons, 1888), pp. 23-41, 54-59, 
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Revillout, Charles, “ Etude sur l’histoire du colonat chez les Romains,” 
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Rodbertus, “ Zur Geschichte der agrarischen Entwickelung Roms unter 
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Rostovtzeff (Rostowzew), M., “ Die kaiserliche Patrimonialverwaltung 
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“Der Ursprung des Kolonats,” in Beitrage zur alten Geschichte, 
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Article “ Kolonat,” in Conrad’s Handworterbuch der Staatswissen- 
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ee Pe 


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INDEX 


—_—— 


Adscripticiate, slave, 102, 109, 
115,”.2. See Slaves, attached to 
the soil 

Adscriptici, slave, 102, 109-110, 156- 
157. See Slaves, attached to the 
Soi 

Adscripticuit, synonym of coloni, 
17,0.2, 25, 159 

ar het He ate inscription of, 179- 
182 

Ain Quassel, inscription of, 180-183 

Ain Zaga, inscription of, 142, 199 

Africa, coloni of, see Coloni, Afri- 
can; cultivation of waste lands 
in, 175; decline of population in, 
191-192; dense population of, 124; 
desertion of the soil in, 174, 181- 
182, 192, 295; development of the 
colonate in, 138-150, 154-155, 
160-161, 163-165, 171-192, 198- 
199, 219-222, 287-206; effect of 
Roman conquest on, 126, 219-222; 
exhaustion of the soil in, 294- 
298; fertility of, 124, 131; grain 
tribute of, 124; latifundia of, 
119, 256, 260 

Ager publicus, cultivation of, 238- 
240; distribution of during the 
Republic, 253-255; granted to 
Ligurians, 88, 248; patricians’ 
tenure of, 49, 67, 239-240, 254- 
255; rents and taxes of, 120, 255 

Agrarian legislation, in Italy, 253- 
255 

SR Sita see Exhaustion of the 
soi 

Agri deserti, 5, 41, 44, 51, 80, 93- 
94, 96, III, 116, 118, 127, 130, 
135, 247-248, 250, 252-253, 304- 
312; in Africa, 174, 181-182, 192, 
295; in Egypt, 215-216, 302-303 

Ahenobarbus, Domitius, coloni of, 
51-52, 60, 153, 169, 222, 259, 265 

Alfenus, 108 

Allius Maximus, conductor of the 
saltus Burumitanus, 140, 201 


325] 


Ammianus, 77 

Appian, 254 

Arable land, conversion to pasture 
in Italy, 247-249 

Arnold, W. T., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 137,11. I 

Asia Minor, debtor tenants in, 45, 
152; development of the colonate 
in, 165- 166, 202-203, 206-208, 217- 
219, 286-287 : effect of Roman 
conquest on, 218-219, 285-287; 
imperial domains of, 165, 203; 
land tenure in, 217-219; share- 
rent tenures in, 187 

Athenaeus, 71-72 

Augustus, ‘barbarian settlements of, 
59, 87; census of, 61, 75, 140; 
land grants to ‘veterans, 46; 
manumission law of, 66, 266; re- 
organization of the Egyptian ir- 
rigation system, 300- 301; treat- 
ment of Egypt, 299 

Aurelian, barbarian settlements of, 
47, 79, 83 


Bagaudes, rebellion of, 56-67 

Bail, 153. See Cautio 

Barbarian settlements, of Augustus, 
59, 87; of Aurelian, 47, 79, 83; 
of Claudius II, 42, 47, 58, 70, 
83-84; of Constantine, 42, 47. 58, 
TT OF Constantius I, 42, 47, 
48, 58, 79-80; of Constantius ik 
47, 58, 77; of Diocletian, 47, 58, 
79, 80, 82; of Gratian, 47, 58, 77; 
of MHonorius, 47, 58, 76; of 
Julian, 77-78; of Marcus Aure- 
lius, 47, 79, 84-86, 93, 103; of 
Maximian, 47, 58, 790, 80, 82; 
of Nero, 50, 87; of Probus, 47, 
48, 58, 70, 82-83; of the Republic, 
60, 88-89; of Theodosius II, 47, 
58, 76; of Tiberius, 87; of Valen- 
tinian I, 47, 77; of Valentinian 
II, 58 

325 


326 


Beaudouin, E., on the inscription 
of Henchir Mettich, 176-177; 
theory of the colonate of, 180- 
190 

Beggars, entrance into the colon- 
ate, 29, 40, II2 

Bolkestein, H., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 201,”.2 


Caesar, Julius, 39, 51, 60, 68-60, 116, 
152, 241, 258; allotments of land, 
46, 246, 255; treatment of coloni 
of Asia Minor, 286; treatment 
of Egypt, 299 

Callistratus, 284 

Capitatio humana, 25-26, 110, 159- 
160, 314 

Capitolinus, Julius, 84, 125 

Caput, tax unit, 110-111, 158, 194 

Caracalla, Edict of, 122,n.3, 127 

Carcopinio, J., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 184 

Carton, L. B. C., theory of the 
colonate of, 183-184 

Cassius, Spurius, attempt at agra- 
rian reform, 253 

Catiline, coloni of, 60, 153, 160, 
187, 222, 250, 265 

Cato the Elder, 105, 243, 244, 246- 
247, 248, 240, 251 

Catoecic land, in Egypt, 203-205 

Cautio, 153, 162, 276-277, 278 

Censibus adscripti, synonym of 
coloni, 17,n.3, 25, 159 

Censitt, synonym of coloni, 17,n.3, 
25, 159 

Census, of Augustus, 61, 75, 140; 
registration of coloni in, 58, ror, 
IIO-I1I, 157, 158-150, 163, 270, 

5 


Nn. 

Cicero, 249, 256, 259-260, 267 

Cincius, 258 

Claudian, 298 

Claudius II, barbarian settlements 
of, 42, 47, 58, 79, 83-84 

Claudius, Appius, attempt at agra- 
rian reform, 253 

Clients, Gallic, see Early servile 
tenures 

Clients, of Pompey, 259 

Clients, Roman, see Early servile 
tenures 

Collegia, 30, 53, 55, 95-96, 316 

Colonate, development of, in Africa, 
138-150, 154-155, 160-161, 163- 


INDEX 


ee AE AS 


[326 


165, I7I-192, 198-199, 219-222, 
287-296; in Asia Minor, 165-166, — 
202-203, 206-208, 217-219, 285- 
287; in Egypt, 35-37, 203-206, 
208-216, 287, 301-303; in Italy, 
31, 39-41, 50-52, 59-60, 67, 105- 
II2, 127, I51-154, 166-167, 186- 
187, I90-IQI, 222-223, 232-233, 
258-279; in Sicily, 216-217, 285- 
Colonate, theories of origin, of 
Arnold, 137,n.1; of Beaudouin, 
189-190; of Bolkestein, 201,7.2; 
of Carcopino, 184; of Carton, 
183-184; of Cujacius, 31; criti- 
cism of, 32, 67; of Cunningham, 
160,n.5; of Cugq, 184-185; of 
Dureau de la Malle, 42; criti- 
cism of, 70-74; of Esmein, 144- 
149, 160; criticism of, 149-150; 
of Frank, 235,7.3; of Fustel de 
Coulanges, 150-160; criticism of, 
161-163; of Garsonnet, 132-133; 
criticism of, 136; of Giraud, 50- 
52, 63; criticism of, 61, 70-74; — 
of Glasson, 160-162; criticism of, 
162-163; of Gothofredus, 31-32; 
criticism of, 32; of Guizot, 38- 
39; criticism of, 54, 68-70; of 
Hartmann, 201,”.2; of Hegel, 
53-54; criticism of, 136; of 
Heisterbergk, 103, 115-128; criti- 
cism of, 128-131; of Heitland, — 
231-234; criticism of, 234-235; 
of Huschke, 57-61; criticism of, 
61, 75-91; of Kuhn, 132; criti- 
cism of, 136; of Laboulaye, 41- 
42; of Laferriére, 49-50, 63, 64; 
criticism of, 65, 67; of Leclercq, 
160,.5; of Marquardt, 137,n.1; 
of Meyer, 203-204, 208-200; 
criticism of, 204-205; of Mis- 
poulet, 183; of Mitteis, 205-206; 
of Mommsen, 143-144, 201,n.2; 
of Pelham, 164-168; criticism of, 
168-170; of Puchta, 43-44, 65-66; 
criticism of, 46, 61, 66; of 
Rérolle, 160; of Revillout, 92-06; 
criticism of, 96-98, 134-135; of 
Rodbertus, 103-112; criticism of, 
112-118, 124, 128, 130, 143-144; 
of Rostovtzeff, 206-208, 200-225 ; 
criticism of, 226-231; of Rudorff, 
35-37; criticism of, 37, 67-68; 
of Savigny, 32-34, 37-38, 61-62, 


SOAR! A AP OLON, ~  ~nn ohn OD. 


327 | 


Coloni, 


63, 65; criticism of, 39-40, 63-64; 
of Schulten, 185-189; of Schultz, 
39-41 ; criticism of, 67; of Seeck, 
190-194; criticism of, 194-197; 
of Serrigny, 98-102; criticism of, 
102-103, 136; of Simkhovitch, 
5-7, 235; of Terrat, 137,n.1; of 
Vinogradoff, 197-200; criticism 
of, 200-201; of Wallon, 53, 54- 
57; criticism of, 133-135; of 
Wenck, 35; criticism of, 37-38; 
of Willems, 160; of Zumpt, 44- 
49; criticism of, 75-91 


Colonate, theories of origin, admin- 


istrative pressure, 53-54, 55-57, 
QI, 92-134, 137,n.1, 148-149, 157- 
160, 164-168, 185, 189, 104, 224- 
225, 234; criticism of, 134-136, 
162-163; barbarian settlements, 
31-32, 35, 41-42, 46-49, 52, 57-60, 
100, 102, 133, 137,n.1, 144, 156, 
193-194; criticism of, 39-40, 74- 
91; conscription for military ser- 
vice, 133, 201,”.2, 314; exhaus- 
tion of the soil, 5-7, 13, 235, 236- 
317; gradual depression of status, 
150-160, 183-184, 186-180, 190- 
194, 232-234; criticism of, 162- 
163; immobilization of status, 
53-55, 96, 102, 110, 132, 136, 183, 
STG criticism of, 136; influence 
of Christianity, 57; criticism of, 
134; influence of the East, 187, 
202-225; criticism of, 226-230; 
latifundia, 145-140, 154-155, 160- 
161, 164-168; criticism of, 169- 
170; limited manumission of 
slaves, 33-34, 43-44; criticism of, 
65-66: maintenance of agricul- 
ture, 52, I00, 102, 132-133, 188, 
197-200, 233-234; previous ser- 
vile tenures, II, 31, 36-37, 38-41, 
42, 49-52, 59-61, 101, 132. 103; 
criticism of, II, 32-33, 66-74; 
taxation, 53-55, 57, 93-96, I10- 
EIT, 126-128, 159-160, 185, 186, 
194, 224-225, 314-315; criticism 
of, II-I2, 134-135, 162-163, 315; 
voluntary enlistment of freemen, 
33-34, 50-51, 63-65, 100; criticism 
of, 64-65, 102-103 

African, compared to 
Egyptian yewpyoi, 228-220; ex- 
emptions from rent of, 173, 182, 
198; desertion of holdings, 174, 


INDEX 327 


Coloni, serf-, 


hod 


181-182, 192, 295; held no lease, 
155, 288; hereditary rights of, 
175-176, 181, 183, 204; humble 
condition of, 147-148, 288; per- 
manent tenure of, 148, 155, 287- 
288; not bound to the soil, 143, 
149-150, 174; share rent of, 139, 
155, 172, 182; services of, 139, 
143, 148, 174-175, 198, 201 


Coloni, tenant-, abatements of rent 


of, 152, 264, 268-269; arrears in 
rent of, 152-153, 186, 267-273; 
311; change from money rent to 
rents in kind, 152-153, 187, 273- 
275; compared to serf-coloni, 5, 
9-10, 30, 264-265; dependent 
condition of, 153-154, 186-187, 
265-267, 272-276; free to leave 
at end of lease, 93, 114, 151, 189, 
262, 264, 276-277 : illegal reten- 
tion of, 278; improvements of, 
264, 292-203 ; increase in numbers 
in late Republic, 258-261; in 


early Rome, 238-241; in the pro- 


vinces, I2I-122; lease cf, 114, 
262-264; money rent of, 114, 151, 
262-263, 268; obligations of, 263- 
264; payments in kind, 274; 
registration in the census, 58, 
IOI, 157, 158-159, 163, 196, 
270,n.5; renewal of leases, 262, 
279; rights of, 264, 278; share 
rent of, 152, 161, 187, 263, 273; 
services of, 275.5, 276; ten- 
dency toward long tenures, 186, 
277-279, 281-284 

i as priests, 19; as 
soldiers, 19, 26-27; attached to 
the soil, 17-18, 21-22, 312-313; 
compared to Egyptian yewpyoi, 
230; compared to slaves, 19-22; 
compared to tenant-coloni, 5, 9- 
10, 30, 264-265; could not be 
disattached by proprietor, 23, 
312; nor ‘Treasury, 312-313; 
emancipation of, 20-30; entrance 
into condition, 28-20, 34; flight 
of, 21-23; legal status of, 18; 
marriage of, 19, 27-28; prop- 
erty of, 20; punishment of, 21; 
rent of, 23-24; rights of, 19-21; 
security of tenure, 23; services 
of, 10, 24-26; taxes of, 20, 25-26 


Colom Caesaris, 58, 146-148, 165- 


168, 281-284; liberi, 51, 98-100, 


328 


102, III-112; partiari, 152-153, 
155, 161-162, 187, 263, 273 

Colonus, as a colonist, 238; as a 
peasant proprietor, 236-237 ; deri- 
vation of word, 236 

Columella, 6, 40, 41, 51, 52, 59, 97, 
105-106, 109, I14, 118, 119, 121, 
122, 129, 131, 138, 145, 152, 243, 
252, 256, 260, 268, 272, 274, 275, 
27 

Commodus, grants petition of Afri- 
can coloni, 141-143 

Conductores, of Africa compared 
to coloni, 139, 147-148; compared 
to xdrotkot, 203-205; encroach- 
ments on rights of coloni, 140, 
191, 295-296; identified with 
domint by Schulten, 177-178; 
short-term lease of, 141, 148 

Conductores, of Asia Minor, 
203 

Conductores, of Italy, 151, 262 

Constantine, barbarian settlements 
of, 42, 47, 58, 77, 78; rescript 
Of. 332 AD Dita WIste ae 
reforms of, 94 

Constantius I, barbarian  settle- 
ments of, 42, 47, 48, 58, 79-80 

Constantius II, barbarian settle- 
ments of, 47, 58, 77 

Constitutio de Scyris, 6, 18-19, 48, 
57-58, 309; text, 34-35 

Corporations, see ’Collegia 

Cujacius, theory of the colonate of, 
31; criticism of, 32, 67 

Cuq, E., on the inscription of Hen- 
chir Mettich, 178-179; theory of 
the colonate of, 184-185 

Curtales, see Decuriones 

Cunningham, W., theory of the 
colonate of, 160,”.5 


165, 


Dacia, barbarians settled in, 47, 85 

Daughters of Aphrodite, see Early 
servile tenures, hierodules 

Debt, effect on condition of ten- 
antry, 153, 274-277 

Debtor tenants, Asian, 45, 152; 
Egyptian, 45, 152, 215, 302; 
Gallic, 69, 152; Illyrian, 45, 152; 
Italian, 45, 152, 153, 186, 267-273 

Decaprotes, 93-94. See Decuriones 

Decuriones, attached to curia, 53, 
95-96; burden of é7¢fo0A7) on, 310- 
311; responsibility for taxes, 53- 
54, 134, 194, 314-315 


INDEX 


[328 


Dedititu, see Barbarian settlements 

Demosthenes, 71 

Desertion of the soil, see Agri 
desertt 

Dio Cassius, 85, 86, 299 

Diocletian, barbarian settlements of, 
47, 58, 79, 80, 82; tax reforms of, 
IIO-I1I, 127, 133, 134, 157-158, 
194 

Diodorus, 36, 68 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 71,. 
236, 253 

Dureau de la Malle, theory of the 
colonate of, 42; criticism of, 
70-74 


Early servile tenures, clients, Gallic, 
49-50, 68-70; clients, Roman, 33, 
40-41, 40, 60, 65, 67, 266 ; 
yewpyol, dypdotot, 36-37, 42, 59, 
67-68, 146, 213-215, 287; hie- 
rodules, 42, 70, 218; Latin 
Juniani, 101, 103, 266; libertini 
dedititu, 100-101, 103, 266; lites, 
German, 193- 195; next, 50, 60, 
122; obaerati, 45, 60; operarn, 
31, 36, 67; peregrini, 40-41; serfs, 
German, 33, 38-39, 40, 274, 275; 
serfs, Greek, 42, 51, 60, 70-74, 
218; tribesmen, Gallic, 39, 60, 68- 
70 

Edictum perpetuum, 149, 150,n.3 

Egypt, condition of peasantry ac- 
cording to Rudorff, 35-37; debtor 
tenants in, 45, 152, 215, 302; de- 
cline of agriculture in, 302-303; 
desertion of the soil in, 302-303; 
development of the colonate in, 
35-37, 203-206, 208-216, 287, 30I- 
303; effect of Roman conquest 
on, 126, 212-213, 285, 287, 300- 
303; fertility of, 124, 131, 298- 
302; land tenure in, 187, 192, 203- 
205, 210-211, 213 

Emphyteusis, 58, 132-133, 136, 188, 
198-200, 211, 213, 218, 224, 231, 
301, 307-300, 311, 316 

éviPoah, 200, 211, 213, 215, 221, 224, 
231, 301, 302, 309-311, 316 

Ergastula, 107, 110, 243, 256 

Esmein, A., theory of the colonate 
of, 144-1490, 160; criticism of, 
149-150 

Eumenius, 48, 79-80, 82 

Eusebius, 78 


329 | 


Exhaustion of the soil, in Africa, 
294-296, 208; in Gaul, 298; in 
Greece, 297; in Italy, 6-7, 130- 
131, 243-253, 271-272, 280-281; in 
the Roman Empire, 308-313, 315- 
317; in Spain, 298 


Familia rustica, 43, 44, 107, 265 

Familia urbana, 43 

Fertility, of Africa, 124, 131; of 
Egypt, 124, 131, 298-302; of 
Italy, 245; of Spain, 124, I3I. 
See Exhaustion of the soil 

Frank, Tenney, theory of the 
colonate of, 235,n.3. 

Freedmen, 40, 60, 107, 
265-267 

Frontinus, 59, 124-125, 128, 138, 289 

Fundus Villae Magnae Variam, 
171-172, 174-179, 290 

Fustel de Coulanges, N. D., theory 
of the colonate of, 150-160; criti- 
cism of, 161-163 


100-102, 


Gaius, 66, 161, 263, 264, 279 

Gallic tribesmen, see Early servile 
tenures 

Garsonnet, E., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 132-133 

Gaul, barbarian settlements in, 87; 
condition of peasantry, 30, 68-70; 
debtor tenants of, 69, 152; effect 
of Roman conquest on, 126; ex- 
haustion of the soil in, 298 

Gazr-Mezuar, inscription of, 142- 
143, 150, 199, 290, 291 

Germany, barbarians settled in, 47, 
85; subject tenantry of, 33, 38-39, 
40, 274, 275 

yewpyot, BaotAikoi, 211-212 

yewpyot, dnpdorot, compared to A fri- 
can coloni, 228-229; compared to 
serf-coloni, 230. See Early ser- 
vile tenures 

yewpyot KAgpov KaTOLKLKOV, 203-204 

Giraud, C., theory of the colonate 
of, 50-52, 63; criticism of, 61, 


70-74 
Glasson, E., theory of the colonate 
of, 160-162; criticism of, 162-163 
Gothofredus, J., theory of the 
colonate of, 31-32; criticism of, 


32 
Gracchi, agrarian reforms of, 46, 
246, 248, 254-255 


INDEX 


329 


| Grain, scarcity of, 6, 35, 49, 233- 


234, 245, 206, 302, 304, 309; 
Sicilian, effect on Italian agricul- 
ture, 246 

Gratian, barbarian settlements of, 
47, 58, 77 nA, 

Greece, decline of population in, 
192; exhaustion of the soil in, 
297; influence on Roman agra- 
rian development, 51 

Greek serfs, see Early servile 
tenures 

Gsell, S., on usus proprius, 175 

Guizot, F., theory of the colonate 
of, 38-39; criticism of, 54, 68-70 


Hadrian, efforts to develop a state 
peasantry, 166, 168, 183, 281-282 

Hartmann, L. M., theory of the 
colonate of, 201,n.2 

Hegel, C., theory of the colonate 
of, 53-54; criticism of, 136 

Heisterbergk, B., theory of the 
colonate of, 103, 115-128; criti- 
cism of, 128-131 

Heitland, W. E., on services of 
tenant-coloni, 276; theory of the 


colonate of, 231-234; criticism 
of, 234-235 
Hellenistic influences on Roman 


agrarian policy, 208, 210, 212- 
213, 216-217, 220-230 
Helots, of Sparta, see Early ser- 
vile tenures, Greek serfs 
Henchir Mettich, inscription of, 
171-179, 184, 290 
Henchir Salah, ccnintion of, 290 
Herodian, 124 
Herodotus, 36, 68 © 
Early 


Hierodules, see servile 
tenures 

Honorius, barbarian settlements of, 
47, 58, 76 


Horace, 250, 258 

Huschke, G. P. E., theory of the 
colonate of, 57-61; criticism of, 
61, 75-91 


iia, 208-200, 212-217, 219, 222, 225, 
229-230, 287, 302 

Illyria, debtor tenants of, 45, 152; 
effect of Roman conquest on, 126 

Inquilini, attached to the soil, 193, 
195-196, 233; bequest of, 31, 58, 
IOI, 100, 188, 195, 279,7.5 ; de- 


339 


claration in census, 58, 101, 163, 
196, 270,n.5; identified with ded:- 
tit, 193-196; meaning of term, 
17,n.3, 31, 195-196 

Imperial domains, coloni of, 58, 
146-148, 165-168, 281-284; ex- 
tent of, 164; in Italy, 166, 160, 
281-283; leases of, 305-307; re- 
organization of, by Vespasian, 
Trajan, and Hadrian, 166-167, 
281-283; unity of management 
of, 165 

Italy, agrarian development during 
the Republic, 236-261; agrarian 
legislation in, 253-255; barbarian 
settlements in, 47, 77, 83, 85, 88- 
89; debtor tenants in, 45, 152- 153, 
186, 267-273; decline in grain 
production of, 105-106, 245, 246- 
247; decline in population of, 46, 
116-117, 130, 191; development of 
the colonate in, 31, 30-41, 50-52, 
59-60, 67, 105-112, 127, 151-154, 
166-167, 186-187, 190-191, 222- 
223, 232-233, 258-279; fertility 
of, 245; exhaustion of the soil in, 
6-7, 130-131, 243-253, 271-272, 
280-281; imperial domains of, 
166, 160, 281-283; latifundia of, 
5I, 90, 105, 107, 118-121, 130, 
240-241, 253-256; slavery in, see 
Slavery 


Josephus, 124 

Jugatio terrena, 110, 314 

Jugum, tax unit, II0-III, 194 

Mapas barbarian settlements of, 77- 
7 

Junian Latins, see Latint Juniani 

Jus emphyteuticum, 307. See Em- 
phyteusis 

Jus perpetuum, 306 

Jus privatum salvo canone, 306-307 


xdroxot, compared to African con- 
ductores, 203-205 

KTATOPEC, 215 

Kuhn, E., theory of the colonate of, 
12: criticism of, 136 


Laboulaye, E., theory of the colo- 
nate of, 41-42 

Laeti, identified with lites, 193-195 

Laferriére, ME Ey theory of the 


INDEX 


[330 


colonate of, 49-50, 63, 64; criti- 
cism of, 65, 67 

Land, deserted, waste, see Agri 
desertt 

Laodice inscription, 206, 217-218 

Aaoi, in Asia Minor 206, 208, 217- 
210 

Lotifundin cultivation of, 51, 105, 
107, I18-I19, 244; great size of, 
118-119; in Italy, 51, 90, 105, 107, 
118-121, 130, 240-241, 253-256; in 
the provinces, I19, I120-I2I, 129- 
130, 256, 260; taxation of, 157-158 

Latin Juniam, see Early servile 
tenures 

Leases, forced, in Egypt, 211; of 
imperial domains, 305-307; of 
tenant-coloni 114, 262-264 

Leclercq, H., theory of the colonate 
of, 160,7.5 

Lex Aelia Sentia, 266 

Lex a majoribus constituta, expla- 
nation of Fustel de Coulanges, 
151; identified with the census of 
Augustus, 61, 149; with the 
Edictum perpetwum, 149, 150,n.3; 
with idia, 225; with the Jex Had- 
riana, 148-150 

Lex Hadriana, as the law establish- 
ing the colonate, 149-150; com- 
pared to the lex Manciana, 203- 
294; identified with the Edictwm 
perpetuum, 149, 150,7.3; with the 
lex a majoribus constituta, 148- 
150; influence on the development 
of the colonate, 183-184, 185; 
Hellenistic influences on, 220, 
228; regulations on hereditary 
tenures, 181, 183, 188, 180, 104; 
on operae, 1390-142; on unculti- 
vated lands, 180-183 

Lex Hieronica, 216 

Lex Junia Norbana, 266 

Lex Manciana, an imperial or pri- 
vate regulation? 176-180; com- 
pared to the lex Hadriana, 293- 
294; influence on the development 
of the colonate, 184-185; grant of 
usus proprius, 175, 2903-204; Hel- 
lenistic influence on, 220, 228; 
regulations on deserted lands, 
174; on rents, 173, 202-203 

Libertini dedititii, see Early servile 
tenures 

Licinian Law, 253 


331] 


Lites, German 193-195. 
servile tenures 
Livy, 88, 116, 245, 252, 253 


See Early 


Macedonia, barbarian settlements 
in, 83; effect of Roman conquest 
On, 217 

Magister, of coloni, 165, 290 

Malaria, 250-252 

Marcellus, 278 

Marcian, 101, 109, 188, 195, 270,n.5 

Marcus Aurelius, barbarian settle- 
ments of, 47, 79, 84-86, 93, 193 

Marquardt, J., theory of the colo- 
nate of, 137,n.1 

Martial, 268, 274 

Maximian, barbarian settlements 
of, 47, 58, 79, 80, 82 

Mayence, F., criticism of Meyer, 
204-205 

Meyer, P., theory of the colonate 
of, 203-204, 208-209; criticism 
of, 204-205 

Minoans of Crete, see Early servile 
tenures, Greek serfs 

Mispoulet, J. B., on the inscription 
of Ain Ouassel, 183; theory of 
the colonate of, 183 

Mitteis, L., criticism of Meyer, 
205; theory of the colonate of, 
205-206 

Moesia, barbarians settled in, 47, 
85, 87 

Mommsen, T., on the inscription of 
Souk-el-Khmis, 139, 143-144; 
theory of the colonate of, 143- 
144, 201,2.2 

Mowat, on the inscription of Souk- 
el-Khmis, 139 


Nee barbarian settlements of, 59, 


7 

Nerva, efforts to develop a state 
peasantry, 281-282 

Nexus civium, 59, 122. See Early 
servile tenures, next 


Obaerati, see Debtor tenants; Early 
servile tenures 

Operae, see Coloni, services of 

Operari, see Early servile tenures 

Originari, synonymn of colont, 
17,n.3, 26 

Origo, 95-97, 230 

Ormelian inscriptions, 165-166, 203, 
286-287 


INDEX 


33! 


Papinian, 278 
Pannonia, barbarians settled in, 47, 


Pasturage, conversion of arable to, 
in Italy, 247-249 

Patricians, 49, 67, 238-240 

Patronage, in Gaul, 68-70; in the 
late Empire, 23, 50, 64, 65, 103, 
200-201 ; in the Republic, 40, 67 

Patronus, 34 

Paulus, 108, 188, 196, 263-264 

Pausanius, 72 

Peculium, of coloni, 20; of slaves, 
156, 280 

Pelham, H. F., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 164-168; criticism of, 
168-170 

Penestes, of Thessaly, see Early 
servile tenures, Greek serfs 

Peregrim, see Early servile tenures 

Pertinax, grants of deserted land, 
93, 192, 304-305 

Plautus, 251 

Plebeians, 239-241, 259 

Pliny the Elder, 50, 105, 106, 118, 
IIQ, 131, 138, 236, 242, 243, 245, 
252, 253, 256, 280 

Pliny the Younger, 40, 41, 45, 97, 
108, 114, 120, 130, 138, 152, 153, 
260, 268-269, 277, 280, 283 

Plutarch, 72, 248 

Pollio, Trebellius, 48, 84 

Population, decline of, 5, 41, 197; 
in Africa, 191-192; in Greece, 
192; in Italy, 46, 116-117, 130, 191 

Pompey, clients of, 259 

Prescription, 26, 28, 30 

Probus, barbarian settlements of, 
47, 48, 58, 79, 82-83; improve- 
ment of irrigation system of 
Egypt, 303 i 

Procuratores, of Africa, 139, 140, 
147, 148, 154, 176-177, 179, 180- 
181, 191-192, 206; of Asia Minor, 
165, 203; of the imperial do- 
mains, 146-147 

Proprietors, responsibility for taxes, 
56, 94, 224-225 


Provinces, as the home of the 
colonate, 118-129 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, Revenue 


Laws of, 216 

Puchta, G. F., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 43-44, 65-66; criticism 
of, 46, 61, 66 


332 


Punic Wars, effect on agriculture, 
246-247 


Quasi coloni, see Slaves, as tenants 


Ramsay, W. M., on the imperial 
domains of Asia Minor, 203 
Recruits, barbarian, 35, 79-81, 85, 


89 

Rent, abatements of, 264, 268, 260. 
See Coloni, rent of 

_ Rérolle, L., theory of the colonate 


of, I 

Revillout, C., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 92-96; criticism of, 96- 
98, 134-135 

Rodbertus, theory of the colonate 
of, 103-112; criticism of, 112- 
118, 124, 128, 130, 143-144 

Rostovtzeff, M., criticism of Meyer, 
204; theory of the colonate of, 
206-208, 209-225; criticism of, 
226-231 

Rudorff, A., theory of the colonate 
of, 35-37; criticism of, 37, 67-68 


Saltus, 145-146 

Saltus Burunitanus, 139-142, 164, 
165; coloni of, 147-148 

sta 29, 33, 59, 63-64, 65, 76, 
2 


Savigny, F. C., theory of the 
colonate of, 32-34, 37-28, 61-62, 
63, 65; criticism of, 39-40, 63-64 

Scaevola, 108, 109-110, 276-277, 292 

Schulten, A., on the inscription of 
Henchir Mettich, 177-178; theory 
of the colonate of, 185-189 

Schultz, C. L. F., theory of the 
colonate of, 39-41; criticism of, 


67 

Seeck, O., on debts of coloni, 270; 
theory of the colonate of, 190- 
194; criticism of, 194-197 

Seneca, 260 

Serfs, German, see Early servile 
tenures 

Serfs, Greek, see Early servile 
tenures 

Serrigny, D., theorv of the colon- 
ate of, 98-102; criticism of, 102- 
103, 136 

Services, required by the ler 
Hadriana, 139-140, 141, 142. See 
Coloni, services of 


INDEX 


[332 


Share rent, in Africa, 139, 155, 172, 
182; in Egypt, 192; in Italy, 152- 
I 33; 155, 161, 263, 273; in Sicily, 
I 

Share-rent Colont 
partiarit 

Sicilian grain, effect on Italian 
agriculture, 246 

Sicily, development of the colon- 
ate in, 216-217; effect of Roman 
conquest on, 216-217, 285-286; 
latifundia of, 256,n.5, 260; share- 
rent tenures of, 187; slave re- 
volts in, 257 

Simkhovitch, V. G., theory of the 
colonate of, 5-7, 235 

Slavery, decline in Italy, 117, 191, 
257-258; development in Italy, 
240-244 : 

Slaves, as tenants, 41, 98-100, 102, 
107-108, III, I14-115, 118, 156- 
157, 261, 281; attached to the 
soil, 7, 102, 100, III-113, 127, 157, 
313; cultivation by, 105, 107, 239, 
240-244; decline in numbers, 55, 
92, 117, 191, 257-258; improve- 
ment in condition in early Empire, 
5I, 109-110, 280-281; in Africa, 
124, 171; manumission of, 43-44, 
65-66, 100-101, 265-266; revolts 
of, 117, 257; sources of, 56, 241- 
242 

Slave stewards, see Vilici 

Sordida munera, 26 

Souk-el-Khmis, inscription of, 138- 
142, 147-148, 150, 154-155, 163- 
164, 165, 199, 290; text, 140-142 

Spain, effect of Roman conquest 
on, 126; exhaustion of the soil 
in, 298; fertility of, 124, 131; 
grain tribute of, 124 

Spartacus, revolt of, 257 

Strabo, 50, 71, 242 

Strikes, of Egyptian peasants, 211, 
302 

Subcesiva, 175 

Sulla, allotments of, 46, 248 

Symmachus, 7, 311, 312 


tenants, see 


Tacitus, 33, 40, 52, 70, 272,".2, 
274, 275 

Taxes, farming of, 119, 216, 286; 
poll, 25-26, 110, 159-160, 314; 
abolished in Thrace, 135; pro- 
vincial, 123; reforms of Diocle- 


333] 


tian, IIO-III, 127, 133, 134, 157- [ 


158, 194. See Capitatio humana, 
Jugatio terrena, Tributum, 
V ectigal 

Terence, 251, 258 

Terrat, B., theory of the colonate 
of, 137,n.1 

Thrace, barbarian settlements in, 


2, 83 

Theodosius II, barbarian settle- 
ments of, 47, 58, 76 

Tiberius, Emperor, barbarian set- 
tlements of, 87; manumission 
law of, 66, 266; watchfulness 
over Egypt, 200 

Tiberius Julius Alexander, prefect 
of Egypt, Edict of, 35-36, 68, 
128, 205-206 

Trajan, efforts to develop a state 
peasantry, 166, 168, 281-283 

Tributarii, 17,n.3, 25, 48, 59, 77- 
78, 159 

Tributum, 78, 110, 120, 127; effect 
on the provinces, 295-208, 30I- 
303, 316 

Triumvirs, allotments of, 246 

Toutain, J., on the inscription of 
Henchir Mettich, 176-177 


Ulpian, 101, 108, 196, 279, 279,n.5 

trouofwtai, 215 

Usus proprius, right of, 175, 203- 
204 


Vagabonds, entrance into the colon- 
ate, 20, 56, 112 

Valentinian I, barbarian 
ments of, 47, 77 


settle- 


INDEX 


333 


Valentinian II, barbarian settle- 
ments of, 58 

Varro, 36, 45, 51, 60, 97, 106, 152, 
244, 249, 251, 260, 267, 276 

Vegetius, 10 

Vectigal, 77, 78, 120, 204, 239, 255 

Venerii of Sicily, see Early servile 
tenures, hierodules 

Vergil, 250, 260 

Vespasian, efforts to develop a state 
peasantry, 166, 168, 281-282 

Veterans, allotments of land to, 
46, 93, 195, 210-211, 213, 248, 
270, 300, 305 

Victor, Aurelius, 124 

Vilict, 107, 108, 153, I71, 173, 174, 
178, 179, I91, 242, 244, 273, 275 

“Villa” system, in prehistoric 
Rome, 237 

Vinogradoff, P., theory of the 
colonate of, 197-200; criticism 
of, 200-201 

Von Thiinen, influence on Rod- 
bertus, 104-106 

Vopiscus, 82 


Wallon, H. A., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 53, 54-57; criticism of, 
133-135 

Wenck, theory of the colonate of, 
35; criticism of, 37-38 

besa! theory of the colonate of, 
160 


Zosimus, 82 

Zumpt, A. W., theory of the colon- 
ate of, 44-40; criticism of, 75-91; 
supported by Savigny, 6, 62 





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VOLUME I, 1891-92. 2nd Ed. 1897. 396 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50. 


1. The Divorce Problem. A Study in Statistics. 
‘By Water F. Wittcox, Ph.D. (Wot sold separately.) 


2. The History of Tariff Administration in the United States, from Colonial! 
Times to the McKinley Administrative Bill. 
By Joun Dean Goss, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


8. History of Municipal Land Ownership on Manhattan Island. 
By Grorce AsHuTon Brack, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


4. Financial History of Massachusetts. 
By Cuartes H, J. Dovecras, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME IT, 1892-93. (See note on last page.) 


1. [5] The Economics of the Russian Village. 
By Isaac A. Hourwicu, Ph.D. (Oui of print). 


2. [6] Bankruptcy. A Study in Comparative Legislation. } 
i By Samugz W. Dunscoms, Jr., Ph.D. (Out of print.) 


8. [7] Special Assessments; A Study in Municipal Finance. 
By Vicror Rosewater, Ph.D. Second Edition, 1898. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME III, 1893. 465 pp. (See note on last page.) 


1. [8] *History of Elections in American Colonies. 
By CorTLanp F. BisHop, Ph.D. ( Out of print.) 


2. [9] The Commercial Policy of England toward the American Colonies. 
By Gsorce L. Beer, A.M. (Out of print.) 


VOLUME IV, 1893-94. 438 pp. (See note on last page.) 


1. [10] Financial History of Virginia. 

By Wit.taM Z, Riptey, Ph.D. (Wot sold separately.) 
2.[11] *The Inheritance Tax. By Max West,Ph.D. (Out of print.) 
8. [12] History of Taxationin Vermont. By Frepericx A. Woop, Ph.D.( Out of print.) 


VOLUME V, 1895-96. 498 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50. 


1. [13] Double Taxation in the United States. 
By Francis WALKER, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
2. [14] The Separation of Governmental Powers. 
By Wir.raM Bonpy, LL.B., Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
8. [15] Municipal Government in Michigan and Ohio. 
y Dsxtos F. Witcox, Ph.D. Price, g1.00. 


VOLUME VI, 1896. 601 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50; Paper covers, $4.00, 


16] History of Proprietary Governmentin Pennsylvania. 
£16] oe fe By Witi1am ROBERT SHEPMERD, Ph.D, 


VOLUME VII, 1896. 512pp. Price, cloth, $3.50, 


1. [17] History of the Transition from Provincial to Commonwealth Gove 
ernmentin Massachusetts. By Harry A. CusHuinG, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 

2. [18]}*Speculation on the Stockand Produce Exchanges of the United States 
By Henry Crossy Emury, Ph.D. ( Out of print. 


VOLUME VIII, 1896-98. 551 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [19] The Struggle between President Johnson and Congress over Recone 
struction. By CHar es Ernest CHapsgy, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
2.[20] Recent Centralizing Tendencies in State Educational Administra- 
tion. By W1LLiAM CLARENCE WEBSTER, Ph.D. Price, 75 cents. 

8. [21] The Abolition of Privateering and the Declaration of Paris. 
By Francis R. STarK, LL.B., Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 
4. [22] Public Administration in Massachusetts. The Relation of Central 
to Local Activity. By Rosert Harvay Wuitren, Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 


VOLUME IX, 1897-98,"617 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [23] *English Local Government of To-day. A Study of the Relations of 
Central and Local Government. By Miro Roy Matrtsisz, Ph.D, Price, $2.00, 

2. [24] German Wage Theories. A History of their Development. : 
By James W. Crook, Ph.D. Price, $1.00 

&. [25] The Centralization of Administration in New York State. 
By JouHn ARCHIBALD Farriz, Ph.D, Price, $1.00, 


VOLUME X, 1898-99. 409 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50. 


1. [26] Sympathetic Strikes and Sympathetic Lockouts. 
By Frep S. Hatt, Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 
2. [27] *Rhode Island and the Formation of ihe Union. 
By FRANK Grezne Batss, Ph.D. Price, £1.50, 
8. [28]. Centralized Administration of Liquor Laws in the American Com, 


monwealths. By Crement Moore Lacsy Sitzs, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
VOLUME XI, 1899. 495 pp. Price, cloth, 4.00; paper covers, $3.50. 
£29] The Growth of Cities. By Apna Ferrin Weeer Ph.D. 


VOLUME XII, 1899-1900. 586 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


8, [830] History and Functions of Central Labor Unions. ‘ 
By Witit1am Maxwe tu Burkxg, Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 
9%, [81.] Colonial Immigration Laws. 
By Epwarp Emerson Prorrr,A.M. Price, 75 cents, 
8, [32] History of Military Pension Legislation in the United States. 
By Wiit1AM Henry Grasson, Ph.D, Price, $1.00. 
4. [83] History of the Theory of Sovereignty since Rousseau. ] 
By Cuarvzs kK. Merriam, Jr., Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


VOLUME XIII, 1901. 570 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
1. [84] 'Yhe Legal Property Relations of Married Parties. 


By Isrpor Loss, Ph.D. Price, 1.50. 

2. [85] Political Nativism in New York 8tate. 
By Louts Dow Scisco, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 
8. [88] The Reconstruction of Georgia. By Epvwin C. Woottey, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME XIV, 1901-1902. 576 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


g. [87] Loyalism in New York during the American Revolution, 
By ALEXANDER CLARENCE FLick, Ph.D. Price. $2.00. 
2. [88] The Economic Theory of Risk and Insurance. 
By Attan H. Wittett, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 
8. [89] The Eastern Question: A Study in Diplomacy. 
By Stgeruen P. H. Duccan, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME XV, 1902. 427pp. Price, cloth, $3.50; Paper covers, $3.00. 
[40] Crime in Its Relation to Social Progress. By Arruur CLeveranp HAtt, Ph.D, 
VOLUME XVI, 1902-1903. 547 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [41] The Past and Present of Commerce in Japan, 
By Yeraro Kiwosita, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. [42] The Employment of Women in the Clothing Trade. 
By Masset Hurp WIttstT, Ph.D. Price, £1.50. 
8. [48] The Centralization of Administration in Ohio. 
By Samus. P. Ortu, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


VOLUME XVII, 1903. 635 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1, [44] *Centralizing Tendencies in the Administration of Indiana, 
By Wirtxuram A. Raw ss, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 
2.[45] Principles of Justicein Taxation, By SterHen F. Wxsron, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME XVIII, 1903. 753pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [46] The Administration ofIowa. By Harotp Martin Bowman, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. (47] Turgot and the Six Edicts. By Rosert P. Suspuerp, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
3. [48] Hanover and Prussia, 1795-1808. By Guy Stanton Forp, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME XIX, 1903-1905. 588 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [4 O| Josiah Tucker, Economist. By Wa.Tsr Ernest CrarkK, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 
2. (50) History and Criticism of the Labor Theory of Value in English Polit- 
ical Economy. By Avsert C. WHiraksr, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 

8. [51] Trade Unions and the Law in New York. 
By Grorce Goruam Groat, Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 


VOLUME XX, 1904. 514 pp. Price, cloth. $3.50. 


4. [52] The Office of the Justice of the Peace in England. 
By CHartzes AusTIN Bearp, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. [53] A History of Military Government in pba fs Acyuired Territory of 
the United States. By Davip Y. Tuomas, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME XXI, 1904. 746 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [54] *Treaties, their Making and Enforcement. 

By Samugt B. CRANDALL, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. [55] The Sociology ofa New York City Block. 

By Tuomas Jessg Jonss, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
8. [56] Pre-Malthusian Doctrines of Popuiation. 
S By Cuarvss E, Stanceranp, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


: 


| ‘VOLUME XXII, 1905, 520 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50; paper covers, $3.00. 
57] The Historical Development of the Poor Law of Connecticut. 
| : By Epwaxp W., Cargn, Ph. D, 


N VOLUME XXIII, 1905. 594 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


. [58] The Economics of Land Tenure in Georgia. 
By EnocH Marvin Banks, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
|. [69] Mistake in Contract. A Study in Comparative Jurisprudence. 

By Epwin C. McKeae, Ph.D. Price, fr.00, 
|. [60] Combination in the Mining Industry. 
By Henry R. Mussgey, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
_» [61] The English Craft Guilds and the Government. 4 
By Stetira Kramer, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME XXIV, 1905. 521 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00, 


L. [62] The Place of Magic in the Intellectual History of Europe. 

i By Lynn THornpike, Ph.D, Price, $1.00, 
}. [63] The Ecclesiastical Edicts of the Theodosian Code, 

i By Wittiam K. Boyp, Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 
13. [64] *The International Position of Japan as a Great Power. 

I By Seyi G. Hisuipa, Ph.D, Price, $2.00, 


; 


\/ VOLUME XXV, 1906-07. 600 pp. (Sold only in Sets.) 


‘|. [65] *Municipal Control of Public Utilities. 
By O. L. Ponp, Ph.D. (Not sold separately.) 

|}. [66] The Budget in the American Commonwealths. 

if By Eucsne E, Accsr, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 

4. [67] The Finances of Cleveland. By Cuarces C. Wittiamson, Ph.D, Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME XXVI1,1907. 559 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


.L. [68] Trade and Currency in Early Oregon. 

\ By James H. Girsert, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
Be ea “uther’s Table Talk. By Preservep SMITH, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
13. [70] The Tobacco Industry in the United States. 

| y Meyer Jaconstzin, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 





Lt. [71] Social Democracy and Population. ; 
| By Atvan A, Tenney, Ph.D. Price, 75 cents, 
i VOLUME XXVII, 1907. 578 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
L. [72] The Economic Policy of Robert Walpole. 
By Norais A. Brisco, Ph.D, Price, $1.50, 
2. [73] The United States Steel Corporation. 
By AzsraHaM BerGuiunp, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
3. [74] The Taxation of Corporations in Massachusetts. 
y Harry G, Frizpman, Ph.D. Price, g1.50. 
VOLUME XXVIII, 1907. 564 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


] 

| 1. [75] DeWitt Clinton and the Origin of the Spoils System in New York. 

| By Howarp Leg McBatin, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. [76] The Development of the Legislature of Colonial Virginia. 


By Ermer I. Miter, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
3. [77] The Distribution of Ownership. ; 
| By josepH Harpinc Unpgerwoop, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
| VOLUME XXIX, 1908. 703 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. it 8] Early New England Towns. By Anne Bus MacLzar, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. [79] New Hampshire as a Royal Province. 
By Wtiuram H, Fry, Ph.D. Price, $3.00, 


VOLUME XXX, 1908. 712pp. Price, cloth, $4.50; Paper covers, $4.00, 
| '80] The Province of New Jersey, 1664-1738. By Epwin P. Tanner, Ph.D. 


VOLUME XXXI, 1908. 575 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
‘1. [81] Private Freight Cars and American Railroads. 

RRR IE hes . By L. D. H. Wetp, Ph.D, Price, ¢1.50. 
2. [82] Ohio before 1850. By Rozsert E. Cuappock, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
‘3. [S38] Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population. 

By Ggorcs B. Louis Arner, Ph.D. _ Price, 75 cents. 
4. [84] Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician. By Franx H. Hankins, Ph.D. Price, $1.25, 


VOLUME XXXII, 1908. 705 pp. Price, cloth, 4.50; paper covers, $4.00. 


he Enforcement of the Statutes of Laborers. 
: tik By Bertua Haven Putnam, Ph.D, 


VOLUME XXXIII, 1908-1909. 635 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 








1. [86] Factory Legislation in Maine. By E. Stace Wuittn, A.B. Price, $1.00, 
2. (87| *Psychological Interpretations of Society. (Not sold 
By Micwast M. Davis, Jr., Ph.D. separately, 


“8. [88] *An Introduction to the Sources relating to the Germanic Invasions. 
By Carton J, H. Havus, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


VOLUME XXXIV, 1909. 628 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


4. [89] Transportation and Industrial Development in the Middle West. 
By Wivtiam F. Gepuart, Ph.D. Price, $2.08, 
®. [90] Social Reform and the Reformation. 
By Jacos Satwyn Scuapiro, Ph.D. Price, $1.25, 


8. [91] Responsibility for Crime. By Puiir A. Parsons, Ph.D. (Out ofprint.) 


VOLUME XXXV, 1909. 568pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [92] The Conflict over the Judicial Powers in the United States to 1870, 
By Cuarvzs Grove Hangs, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 
%. [93] A Study of the Population of Manhattanville. 
By Howarp Brown Wootston, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 
8. [94] *Divorce: A Study in Social Causation. 
By Jamas P. Licutsenpercer, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 


VOLUME XXXVI, 1910. 542 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. on *Reconstruction in Texas. By CHarres Witt1AM RamspELt, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 
2. (96| * The Transition in Virginia from Colony to Commonwealth. 
By CuarLes RAMSDELL LinGLEy, Ph.D. Price, $2.50, 


VOLUME XXXVII, 1910. 606 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [97] Standards of Reasonableness in Local Freight Discriminations. 
By Joun Maurice Crark, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 
2. [98] Legal Development in Colonial Massachusetts. 
By Cuarues J. Hirxezy, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 
8. [99] *Social and Mental Traits of the Negro. 
By Howarp W. Ovum, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME XXXVIII, 1910. 463 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50. 


1. [100] The Public Domain and Democracy. 
By Rozsert Tupor Hitt, Ph.D. Price, $.co. 

2. [101] Organismic Theories of the State. 
By Francis W, Coxgr, Ph.D, Price, §1.go. 


VOLUME XXXIX, 1910-1911. 651 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [102] The Making of the Balkan States, 
y Wirtram SmitH Murray, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


2. [108] Political History of New York State during the Period of the Civil 
War. «By Srpney Davip Brummer, Ph. D. Price, 3.00, 


VOLUME XL, 1911. 633 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [104] A Survey of Constitutional Development in China. 
By Hawkuine L. Yen, Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 
2. [105] Ohio Politics during the Civil War Period. 
By Grorce H. Portsr, Ph.D. Price, $1.75. 
8. [106] The Territorial Basis of Government under the State Constitutions. 
By ALFRED ZANTZINGER REED, Ph.D. Price, $1.75. 


VOLUME XLI, 1911. 514 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50; paper covers, $3.00. 
[107] New Jersey asa Royal Province. By Epcar Jacos Fisusr, Ph. D. 


VOLUME XLII, 1911. 400 pp. Price, cloth, $3.00; paper covers, $2.50. 


{108} Attitude of American Courts in Labor Cases. 
y Gzorcr Gornam Groat, Ph.D, 


VOLUME XLITI, 1911. 633 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [109] *Industrial Causes of Congestion of Populationin New York City. 
By Epwarp Ewine Pratt, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 
2. fant Education ana the Mores. By F. Stuart CuHarin, Ph.D. Price, 75 cents. 
8. [111] The British Consuls in the Confederacy. ; k 
By Mixiepcs L. Bonuam, Jr., Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUMES XLIV and XLV, 1911. 745 pp. 


Price for the two volumes, cloth, $6.00; paper covers, $5.00. 


(112 and 118] The Economic Principles of Confucius and his School. 
By Cuun Huan-Cuana, Ph.D. 


VOLUME XLVI, 1911-1912. @ 823 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1 oe The Ricardian Socialists. By Estuer Lowzntuat, Ph.D: (Outo/print.) 
2. [115] Ibrahim Pasha, Grand Vizier of Suleiman, the Magnificent. 

By Hester Donatpson Jenkins, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 
6. [116] *Syndicalism in France. 


By Louis Leving, Ph.D. Second edition, 1914. Price, $1.50. 
4&.{117] A Hoosier Village. By Newett Leroy Sims, Ph.D. Price. $1.50 


er 
I 


we ewe | ss - Seer Oe ee. 





VOLUME XLVITI, 1912. 544 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [118] The Politics of Michigan, 1865-1878 
By Harriette M. Ditra, Ph.D. Price, $2.00, 


@. [119] *The United States Beet Sugar Industry, and the Tariff. 


y Roy G. Braxzy, Ph.D, Price, $2.00, 


VOLUME XLVIII, 1912. 493 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
1. [120] Isidor of Seville. By Ernest Brenaut, Ph. D. Price, $2.00. 


| &%. [121] Progress and Uniformity in Child-Labor Legislation. 


By WiLitiaM FIgLDING OcgpuRN, Ph.D. Price, $1.75, 


VOLUME XLIX, 1912. 592 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [122] British Radicalism 1791-1797. By Wattsr Puetps Haru. Price, $2.00. 
8. [123] A Comparative Study of the Law of Corporations. 

By ArtHuR K. Kuun, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
8. [124] *DThe Negro at Work in New York City. . 

By Grorce E. Haynes, Ph.D. Price, $1.25, 


VOLUME L, 1911. 481 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
1. [125] *The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy. [By Yar Yue Tsu, Ph.D, Price, $1.00, 


 &. [126] *The Alien in China, By V1. Kyuin Wetuiincton Koo, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


VOLUME LI, 1912. 4to. Atlas. Price: cloth, $1.50; paper covers, $1.00, 


1. [127] The Sale of Liquor in the South. 
By Lsonarp S. Braxey, Ph.D, 


VOLUME LII, 1912. 489 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


I. [128] *Provincial and Local Taxation in Canada. 
. &. [129] *The Distribution of Income. 


By SoLomMon V1InEBERG, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


By Franx Hatcu Streicutorr, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


' 8. [130] *The Finances of Vermont. By Freperick A. Woop, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME LIII, 1913. 789 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50; paper, $4.00. 
[131] The Civil Warand Reconstruction in Florida. By W. W. Davis, Ph.D, 


VOLUME LIV, 1913. 604 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1.!182] *Privileges and Immunities of Citizens of the United States. ; 
By ARNOLD JoHNSON Lizgn, Ph.D. (Out of prmt.) 


8.[1838] The Supreme Court and Unconstitutional Legislation. 
By Braing Free Moore, Ph.D. Price, $1.00, 


3. [134] *Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the Present Limits of the 
United States. By ALMON WHEELER LaussEr, Ph.D, Price, $3.00, 


VOLUME LV, 1913, 665 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [185] *A Political History of the State of New York. 
By Homer A. Stessrns, Ph.D. Price, $4.00. 


2.({136] *The Early Persecutionsofthe Christians. 
By LeonH. Canrizxp, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


VOLUME LVI, 1913. 406 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50. 


1. [187] Speculation on the New York Stock Exchange, 1904-1907, 
By ALGERNON ASHBURNER OSBORNE, Price, $1.50. 


2.188] The Policy of the United States towards Industrial Monopoly. 
By OswaLp WHITMAN Knautnu, Ph.D. Price, $2.00, 


VOLUME LVII, 1914. 670 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 
1. [189] *The Civil Service of Great Britain. 
By Ropert Mosss, Ph.D. Price, $2.00, 
2. [140] The Financial History of New York State. 
By Don C. Sowgrs. Price, $2.50 
VOLUME LVIII,1914. 684 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50; paper, $4.00. 


({141] Reconstruction in North Carolina, 
By J. G. pz Routnac Hamitron, Ph.D, 


VOLUME LIX, 1914. 625 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


i. [142] The Development of Modern Turkey by means of its Press. 
By AumEp Emin, Ph.D, Price, $1.00. 


2. [143] The System of Taxation in China, 16 14-194 rp 


By SHao-Kwan Cuen, Ph, D. Price, $1.00, 
. ae The Currency Problem in China By WEN Pin Wiz, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 


*Jewish Immigration to the nited States. 
a M By Samuegt Josgrx, Ph.D, Price, $1.50 


VOLUME LX. 1914. 516 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [146] *Constantine the Great and Christianity. 
y CHRISTOPHER BusH CoLEMAN, Ph.D. Price, $2.00, 


2.[147] The Establishment of Christianity and the Proscription of Pa« 
ganism. By Maup Auing Huttman, Ph.D. Price, $2.00, 


VOLUME LXI. 1914. 496 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [148] *The Railway Conductors: A Study in Organized Labor. 
By Epwin CLypE Rossins. Price, $1.50, 


2. [149] *The Finances of the City of New York. 
By Yrn-Cu’u Ma, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


VOLUME LXII. 1914. 414 pp. Price, cloth, $3.50. 


[150] The Journal of the Joint Committee of Fifteen on Reconstruction, 
89th Congress, 1865—1867. By BenjaMIn B, Kenprick, Ph.D, Price, $3.00. 


VOLUME LXIII. 1914. 561 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [151] Emile Durkheim’s Contribution to Sociological fee at 
By CuHarLxes ELMER GEHLKE, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


2. [152] The Nationalization of Railways in Japan. . 
. By TosH1Haru WaATARAI, Ph.D. Price, $1.25, 


8. [158] Population: A Study in Malthusianism. ; 
By Warren S. Tuompson, Ph.D. Price, $1.75. 


VOLUME LXIV. 1915. 646 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [154] *Reconstruction in Georgia. By C. Mitprep Tuompson, Ph.D. Price, 3.00. 
2. (155) *The Review of American Colonial Legislation by the King in 
Council. By Etmer BEECHER RussELL, Ph.D. Price, $1.75. 


VOLUME LXV. 1915. 524pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [156] *The Sovereign Council of New France y 
RAyMOND Du Bors CAHALL, Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 


y 
2. [157] *Scientific Management (8rd. ed. 1922). ; 
By Horace B. Drury, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME LXVI. 1915. 655 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [158] *The Recognition Policy of the United States. 

By Jutius GorskL, Jr., Ph.D. Price, $2.00, 
2. H 59] Railway Problems in China. By Curm Hsu, Ph.D. (Out of print.) 
8. [160] *The Boxer Rebellion. By Pau H. Crements, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME LXVII. 1916. 538 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [16 3 *RusSian Sociology. By Jurrus F. Hecker, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


2. [162] State Regulation of Railroads in the South. 
By Maxwe.t Fereuson, A. M., LL.B. Price, $1.75. 


VOLUME LXVIII. 1916,1924. 815 pp. (Jn two parts separately bound.) 
Price, $7.00. 


1. [168] *&he Origins of the Islamic State. By Puiiir K. Hitti, Ph.D, Price, $4.00. 


2. [163A] *The Origins of the Islamic State. Part II. ; 
By F. C. Murcotren, Ph.D. Price, $3.00, 


VOLUME LXIX. 1916. 489 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
1. [164] Railway Monopoly and Rate Regulation. ; 
By Rozgert J. McFatt, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


2. [165] The Butter Industry in the United States. ; 
By Epwarp Wisst, Ph.D. Price, $2.00, 


VOLUME LXX. 1916. 540 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


[166] Mohammedan Theories of Finance ' 
By Nicoras P. Acunipss, Ph.D. Price, $4.00. 


VOLUME LXXI. 1916. 476 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [167] The Commerce of Louisiana during the French Regime, 1699—1768. 
By N. M. Miter Surrey, Ph.D. Price, $3.50. 


VOLUME LXXII. 1916. 542pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. "168}] American Men of Letters: Their Nature and Nurture. } 
By Epwin Leavitt Crarke, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. ier The Tariff Problem in China, By Cuin Cuu, Ph.D. Price, fr.go. 


3. 117041 The Marketing of Perishable Food Products. y 
By A. B, Adams, Ph.D. (Out of print) 


f 


VOLUME LXXIII, 1917. 616 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [171] *The Social and Economic Aspects of the Chartist Movement. 
By Frank F. Rosensiatr, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


2. [172] *fhe Decline of the Chartist Movement. 
y Preston WILLIAM Stosson, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


S$. [173] Chartism and the Churcbes. By H. U. Fautxnsr, Ph.D. Price, 1.25. 


VOLUME LXXIV. 1917. 546 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [174] The Rise of Ecclesiastical Control in Quebec. 
By WALTER A. Rippgetu, Ph.D. Price, $1.75. 


2. [175] Political Opinion in Massachusetts during the Civil War and Re- 
construction. By Epiru ELLEN Warg, Ph.D. Price, $1.75. 


3. [176] Collective Bargaining in the Lithographic Industry, : 
By H. E. Hoagranp, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME LXXV. 1917. 410 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


An extra-illustrated and bound volume is published at $5.00. 


1. [177] New YorkK as an Eighteenth Century Municipality. Priorto 1731. 
y ARTHUR EverrettT Peterson, Ph.D. Price, $2.00 


2. [178] New York as an Eighteenth Century Municipality. 1731-1776. 
By Grorce Witiiam Epwarps, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME LXXVI. 1917. 489 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [179] *Economic and Social History of Chowan County, North Carolina, 
By W. Scotr Bovcr, Ph.D. Price, 2.50. 


2. [180] Separation of State and Local Revenues in the United States. 
By Maser Newcomsr, Ph.D. Price, $1.75. 


VOLUME LXXVII. 1917. 473 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
[181] American Civil Church Law. By Caru ZOLLMANN, LL.B. Price, $3.50. 


VOLUME LXXVIII. 1917. 647 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


[182] The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution. 
y ARTHUR MaiER SCHLESINGER, Ph.D. Price, $4.00. 


VOLUME LXXIX. 1917-1918. 585 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [183] Contemporary Theories of Unemployment and Unemployment 
By Freperick C. Mitts, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 


Relief. 
2. [184] The French Assembly of 1848 and American Constitutional Doc« 
trine. By Euvcene Newton Curtis, Ph.D. Price, $3.00. 


VOLUME LXXX. 1918. 448 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1, Bre *Valuation and Rate Making. By Rosert L. Harz, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 


2. [186] The Enclosure of Open Fields in Engiand. 
By Harriet Brapwey, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 


8. [187] The Land Tax in China. By H. L. Huane, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
VOLUME LXXXI. 1918. 601 pp. Price, cloth $4.50. 


1. [188] Social Life in Rome in the Time of Plautus and Terence. 
By Georaia W. LEFFINGWELL, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 


2. [189] *Australian Social Development. 
l ] x By Ciarence H. Nortucort, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


&. [190] *Factory Statistics and Industrial Fatigue. 
: J * By Purp S. Frorence, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 


VOLUME LXXXII. 1918-1919. 576 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50. 


1. [191] New England and the Bavarian Illuminati. 
y VERNON STAUFFER, PH.D. Price, $3.00, 


2. [192] Resale Price Maintenance, By Craupius T. Murcnmison, Ph.D. Price, $1.50, 


VOLUME LXXXIII. 1919. 482 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
[198] ThelI. W. W. Second Edition, 1920. By Paut F. Brissenpen, Ph.D. Price, $3.50. 


VOLUME LXXXIV. 1919. 534 pp. Price, cloth, $4.50 


‘ 1 Governmentin Virginia, 1624-1775. 
I tht at ahah * By PERcy Scotr Friern, Ph.D. Price, $3.00. 


2. [195] Hellenic Conceptionsof Peace. By Wattracz E,Catpwett, Ph.D. Price, $1.25, 


». VOLUME LXXXV. 1919. 450 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


» he Religious Policy of the Bavarian Government during the 
‘ Biba aisonic Period: % By Cusster P. Hicsy, Ph.D. Price, $3.00. 


N . 
2. [197] Public Debts of China. By F, H. Huana, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME LXXXVI. 1919. 460 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


{198] The Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York. 
By Drxon Ryan Fox, Ph.D. Price, $3.5c¢. 


VOLUME LXXXVII. 1919. 451 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 
{199]) Foreign Trade of China. By Cuonc Su Szx, Ph.D. Price, $3.50. 


VOLUME LXXXVIII. 1919. 444pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [200] The Street Surface Railway Franchises of New York City. 
By Harry J. CARMAN, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


2, [201] Electric Light Franchises in New York City. 
By Leonora ARENT, Ph.D. Price, $2.50 


VOLUME LXXXIX. 1919. 558 pp. Price, cloth, $5.00. 


1. [202] Women’s Wages. By Emi.iz J. Hutcninson, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 
2. [203) The Return of the Democratic Party to Power in 1884. : 
By Harrison Cook Tuomas, Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 


3. [204] The Paris Bourse and French Finance. : 
By WiLi1AM Parker, Ph.D. Price, $1.00. 


VOLUME XC. 1920. 547 pp. Price, cloth, $5.00. 


1. [205] Prison Methods in New York State. By Puirip Krein, Ph.D. Price, $3.50. 


2. |206| India’s Demand for Transportation. ‘ 
By Witt1aM E, WeEtp, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 


VOLUME XCI. 1920. 626 pp. Price, cloth, $6.00. 


1. [2071 *The Influence of Oversea Expansion on England to 1700. 
By James E. Giirespiz, Ph.D. Price, $3.00. 


2. [208] International Labor Legislation. By I. F. Ayusawa, Pu.D. Price, $2.75. 


VOLUME XCII. 1920. 433 pp. Price, cloth, $5.00. 
[209] The Public Life of William Shirley. By Grorcz A. Woop, Ph.D, Price, $4.50. 


VOLUME XCIII. 1920. 460 pp. Price, cloth, $5.50. 


1. [210] *The English Reform Bill of 1867. By Joszern H. Parx, Ph.D. Price. $3.00. 
2. [211] The Policy of the United States as regards Intervention. 
By CuHarves E. Martin, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME XCIV. 1920-1921. 492 pp. Price, cloth, $5.50. 


. [212] *Catastrophe and Social Change. By S. H. Princz, Ph.D. Price, $1.50 
2 ral Intermarriage in New York City. By Jutius Dracuszer, Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 
214| The Ratification of the Federal Constitution by the State of New 

York. By C. E. Miner, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


VOLUME XCV. 1920-1921. 554 pp. Price, cloth, $5.00. 


beet *Railroad Capitalization. By James C. Bonsricut, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 
2. |216| *American Apprenticeship and Industrial Education. 
By Paut H. Dovetras, Ph.D. (Second Impression.) Price, $2.50. 


VOLUME XCVI. 1921. 539 pp. Price, cloth, $6.50 


1. [217}) *Opening a Highway tothe Pacific. 1838-1846. 
By Jamss Curisty Bett, Jr., Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 
2. [218] Parliamentary Franchise Reform in England from 1885 to 1918. 
By Homer L. Morris, Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 


3. [219] The Peaceable Americans. 1860-61. 
By Mary ScruGHam, Ph.D, Price, $1.50. 


VOLUME XCVII. 1921. 752 pp. Price, cloth, $8.50. 


1. [220] The Working Forces in Japanese Politics. 
By Urcui Iwasaki, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 


2. [221] Social Aspects of the Treatment of the Insane. 
By J. A. GotpserG, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 
3. [222] The Free Negro in Maryland. © By Jamzs M. Wricut, Ph.D. Price, $4.00 


VOLUME’ XCVIII. 1921. 338 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [228] Origins of Asodern German Colonialism, 1871-1885. 
By Mary E. Townsenp, Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 


2. [224] Japan’s Financial Relations with the United States. 
By G. G. Opvarsz, Ph.D. Price, :1.25. 


VOLUME XCIX. 1921-22. 649 pp. Price, cloth, $7.00. 


1. [225] *The Economic History of China: A Study of Soil Exhaustion. 
By Maser Penc-Hva Leg, Ph.D. Price,’$4.50. 
2. [226] Central and Local Finance in China. By Cuuan Sun Li, Ph.D. Price, $2.00 


VOLUME C. 1921. 553 pp. Price, cloth, $6.00 


1. [227] *Contemporary British Opinion during the Franco-Prussian War. 
; Dora NEILL Raymonp, Ph.D, Price, $4.50. 
2. [228] French Contemporary Opinion of the Russian Revolution of 1905. 
By Encarnacion Auzona, Ph.D. Price, $1.25. 


VOLUME CI. 1921-22. 517 pp. Price, cloth, $5.50. 


1. [229] State Taxation of Personal Incomes. 
y Atzapva Comstock, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 
2. [230] The Whig Party in Pennsylvania. By Henry R. Musume, Ph.D. Price, $2.75, 


VOLUME CII. 1922-23. 593 pp. Price, cloth, $6.00. 


1. [231] The Evolution of People’s Banks. By DonatpS. Tucker, Ph.D, Price, $2.75. 
2.1232] The Bank of the State of Missouri. By J. R. Casyz, Ph.D. Price, $3.50. 


VOLUME CIII. 1922. 606 pp. Price, cloth, $6.50. 


1. [233] The Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe 
Doctrine. By Lronarpv AxeEL Lawson, Ph.D. Price, $1.50. 

2. [234] Ledru-Rollin and the Second French Republic. 
By Arvin R. Cartman, Ph.D. Price, £4.50. 


VOLUME CIV. 1922. 492 pp. Price, cloth, $5.50. 


i. [235] *The Populist Movement in Georgia. 
By ALtex Matuews Arnett, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 
2. [286] History of the James River and Kanawha Company. 
By W. F. Dunaway, Ph.D. Price, $2.75. 


VOLUME CV. 1923. 509 pp. Price, cloth, $6.00. 


1. [287] The Regime of the International Rivers: Danube and Rhine. 
By J. P. CHAMBERLAIN, Ph.D. Price, $3.50. 
2. [238] Imperial Control of the Administration of Justice in the Thirteen 
American Colonies. 1684-1776. By Gzorce ADRIAN WASHBURNE, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


VOLUME CVI. 1923. 425 pp. Price, cloth, $5.00. 


1. [239] Labor and Empire. By T. F. Tstanc, Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 
2. 1240! Legislative History of America’s Economic Policy toward the 
Philippines. By Jose S. Reyss, Ph.D. Price, $2.25. 


VOLUME CVII. 1923. 584 pp. Price, cloth, $7.00. 


1. [241] Two Portuguese Communities in New England. 
Donan R. Tart, Ph.D. Price, £4.00. 
2, [242] English Penitential Discipline and Anglo-Saxon Law in their 
joint Influence. By Tuomas P. Oaxtey, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


VOLUME CVIII. 1923. 416 pp. Price, cloth, $5.00. 


1. [243] The Pre-War Business Cycle. 
y Wirutam C, ScuiuTer, Ph.D. Price, $2.00. 


2. [244] Foreign Credit Facilities in the United Kingdom. \ 
By Lzeranp Rex Rosinson, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


VOLUME CIX. 1923. 450 pp. Price, cloth, $5.00. 


(245] Reconstructionin Arkansas. By Tuomas S. Straprss, Ph.D.. Price, $4.50. 


VOLUME CX. 1923-24. 329 pp. Price, cloth, $4.00. 


1. [246] *The United Mine Workers of America and the Non-Union Coal 
i By A. Forp Hinricus, Ph.D. Price, #2.00. 


Fields. 
2.(247] Business Fluctuations and the American Labor Movement. 1915- 
1922. By V. W. LanFear, Ph.D. Price, g1.50. 


VOLUME CXI. 1923-24. 528 pp. Price, cloth, $6.00. 


1. [248] *The Democratic Machine, 1850-1854, 
By Roy Franxkuin Nicuors, Ph.D. Price, $2.50 


2, [249] Labor Disputes and the President of the United States. ; 
y Epwarp Beuwwan, Ph.D. Price, $3.00 


VOLUME CXII. 1923-24. 506 pp. Price, cloth, $7.00. 


1. 1250] *Catholicism and the Second French Republic. 1848-1852. 
By R. W. Cottins, Ph.D. Price, $4.00. 

2.[251] *The Pan-German League. 1890-1914. i 
By Mitprep S. WerTHemeEr, Ph.D. Price, $2.75. 


VOLUME CXIII. 1924. 551 pp. Price, cloth, $6.50. 


1. [252] The Humane Movement in the United States. 1910-1922. 
By WitiiAM J. SHuttz. Ph.D. Price, $3.50. 


2. [253] Farmers and Workers in American Politics. : 
By Stuart A. Ricg, Ph.D. Price, $2.50. 


VOLUME CXIV. 1924. 607 pp. Price, cloth, $6.50. 


t. (254] *Ihe Bank of North Dakota: an Experiment in Agrarian Banking. 
BY ALvIN S. TostLese, Ph.D. Price, $2.25, 


2. [255] *A New American Commercial Policy. 
By Wattace McCtourg, Ph.D. Price, $4.00. 


VOLUME CXV. 1924. 


L. [256] *Frances Wright. By WiLt1AM RANDALL WATERMAN, Ph.D. Price, $2.75. 


2. [257] Tory Democracy. By Wiitram J. WiLtKinson. (Jn press). 


VOLUME CXVI. 1924. 


1.|258] The Labor Policy of the United States Steel Corporation. 
By CHARLES A. GuLick, Jr., Ph.D. (Jn press) 


The price for each separate monograph is for paper-covered copies; separate monographs marked with 
an asterisk, (*), can be supplied bound in cloth, for 75c. additional. All prices are net. 


The set of 114 volumes, covering monographs 1-255, is offered, bound, for $450; except tha 
Volumes II, III, IV, VII, XXXIV, LXVI and LXXII can be supplied only in part, Volume II, Nos, 

1 and 2, Volume III, Nos. 1 and 2, Volume [V, Nos. 2 and 3, Volume VII, No. 2, Volume 
XXXIV, No. 3, Volume XLVI, No. 1, Volume LIV, No. 1, Volume LXVI, No. 2 and 
Volume LXXI, No. 3 being outof print. Volumes II, III, and IV, as described in the 
last sentence, and Volumes Iand XXV can now be supplied only in connection 
with complete sets, but the separate monographs of each of these volumes 
are available unless marked ‘‘not sold separately’’ 


For further information, apply to 


LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., 55 Fifth Avenue, New York. 
P. S. KING & SON, Ltd., Orchard House, Westminster, London. 








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